Festivals - Tartu

Festivals - Tartu

Challanges of Growth, Distinction, Support Base

and Internationalization

PART ONE An overview of the festivals involved in the project 10

1.1. A presentation of the festivals 10

1.2. An analysis of the key issues concerning

the management of the festivals 23

PART TWO Challenges and Strategies 28

2.1. The virtues and limitations of a local festival 28

2.2. The challenge of internationalisation: why internationalize and how? 30

2.3. How to create a synergy of international and local needs,

concerns and components 33

2.4. The poetics and politics of space 35

2.5. Positioning and developing a festival 38

2.5.1. Time as a strategic factor 39

2.5.2. Transactional versus relational 40

2.5.3. A festival and its audiences: what value to exchange? 41

2.5.4. Branding and positioning 43

2.6. The relationships with the stakeholders 44

2.6.1. The stakeholder theory and the festival management 44

2.6.2. The festival and its people 46

2.6.3. The public authorities 47

2.6.4. The local community 47

2.6.5. The private sector 49

2.6.6. The foundations 50

2.6.7. The arts organizations 51

2.6.8. Media and experts 51

PART THREE CVs of the Authors 53

ANNEX A synthetic analysis of the eleven festivals questionnaires 56

Preface - Külli Hansen

Part One - Representatives of the festivals (1.1); Elena Di Stefano (1.2)

Part Two - Dragan Klaic (2.1-2.4); Alessandro Bollo (2.5);

Ugo Bacchella (2.6) with the collaboration of Elena Distefano

Part Three - CV-s of the authors

Annex - Elena Di Stefano

Tartu is a student city with a population of 100,000. It is located on the mainland,

far from the sea compared to other large Estonian cities such as Tallinn and Pärnu,

which does not make it attractive for tourists. At the end of the 1990’s, Tartu faced the

acute problem of being uninteresting in the summer. Students are out of the city and

there are very few attractive cultural events. Tartu virtually had no image event – its

own festival that would have acted as a tourist attraction both domestically and internationally.

In spite of this, Tartu had many cultural activists who organised smaller

festivals and events in their own field – in music, theatre or dance. However, none of

them was as strong or significant to deserve being made the image event of the city.

In 2002, the Department of Culture of the Tartu City Government drafted the project

“Transforming a local festival into an international festival: How to produce a professional,

image-building city festival,” which was submitted to the Culture 2000 programme

for funding.

The main goal of the project was to widen the vista of the festival organisers of Tartu and

help them gain new experiences.

For that purpose contacts with Tartu’s twin towns interested in participating in the

project were established. Since the goal of the project was to share experiences and visit

new festivals, the main emphasis was not on learning about the content and creative

side, but about the organisational side of festivals.

A project team consisting of four people from Tartu, two from Ferrara (Italy), two from

Uppsala (Sweden) and one from Turku (Finland) was formed. The representation of

cities included festival managers as well as employees of city authorities, because, as

the project manager, the Tartu City Government was interested in establishing contacts

and cooperation on the local level. It was also important to involve decision-making

cultural employees who are closely related to financing and funding festivals through

their work.

During the project year, six festivals in five different cities were visited. Seminars were

held in each city, where the organisers introduced their experiences and where topics

related to organisation of festivals were discussed.

During the year, 2 Italians, 2 Swedes, 1 Finn, 2 Russians and 11 Estonians participated

in project-related trips to foreign festivals.

One of the results of the project is this book where the project experts analyse the festivals

and give an overview of the main problems faced by European festivals. The texts

by Dragan Klaic, Ugo Bacchella, Alessandro Bollo and Elena Di Stefano are thorough

overviews, analysing the problems related to organisation of festivals and major events

from several angles. The generalisation of the festivals participating in this project is

based on a response of festival managers to forty questions drafted by Dragan Klaic. The

questions and the responses of the festival managers have been set out in an annex at

the end of the book.

In addition to this book an essential result of the project is a CD-ROM which introduces

all festivals participating in the project.

Summaries of project seminars

The following are some generalisations expressed in the seminars on the six different

festivals and in personal conversations with the festival managers.

Festival type

Festivals can be divided and systematised in several ways – for instance, by theme, duration,

scale or other characteristics. In our discussions it was found that a significant

division arises from the organiser of the festival. In this respect festivals can divided into

two types.

First, festivals initiated by the city, region, institution, etc., with the aim of increasing the

popularity of the city, region, institution and the number of visitors and tourists. Such

festivals often have organisational boards established in the very first year, professional

managers are selected and hired for organising them and their budget is largely funded

by the respective city, region or institution.

Second, festivals sparked by an idea or single fans. These festivals often focus on a specific

topic and may encompass ideas which seem novel or perhaps even insane and are

aimed at a narrow audience. These festivals often start off with a modest budget and

grow year by year along with their managers, until the city or the state starts supporting

them over the years, once they have proven that they are able to survive.

When discussing the main difference between these two festivals it seems that there is

no difference for the audience. Both festivals may be professionally organised, have very

good performers and create a positive image of the city, region or institution.

However, festivals of the first type always have a greater guarantee of being sustained.

If the certain region is directly interested in continuing the festival, they will look for

every opportunity to continue it even if the person who managed the festival cannot

carry or is not interested in carrying the heavy burden anymore. Several cities have established

festival centres which operate throughout the year and the employees of which

are paid out of the city budget. Such centres are aimed, in addition to the organisation of

festivals, at shaping the image of the city. For instance, the city of Turku in Finland has

chosen the image of a Finnish Christmas City for advertising itself and one of the most

important tasks of the Christmas City festival is to shape the image in Finland as well as

abroad in order to increase the number of tourists in winter.

The management and survival of the festivals of the other type depends almost entirely

on the visions of the festival manager.

Such a festival clearly develops along with its manager - it grows, changes and survives

owing to the ideas and the desire of its manager to develop along with the festival. The

manager of such a festival usually has a specific vision of the festival and when developing

it the manager looks for cooperation with the city or region. The main goal of the

festival manager is usually either creative self-realisation or development of the field

out of the feeling of having a mission, paying less attention to advertising the city. Quite

often, these festivals successfully cooperate with local authorities and sponsors. However,

the fate of such festivals is directly related to the manager of the festival – once the

manager gets tired, the festival will usually discontinue, because these two are so closely

connected to one another that they often constitute a common identity.

Prerequisites for the survival of a festival

A very important guarantee for the survival of both festival types is a clear message.

The managers of all successful festivals admit that their main product has not changed.

For instance, the Ferrara Buskers festival, which was launched 16 years ago and seemed

to be novel both in terms of ideas as well as economically, has preserved its principles

throughout these years. When Stefano Bottoni invited street musicians to play in the

streets of Ferrara 16 years ago, he had to fight against the negative attitude towards street

musicians. These days the festival is visited by nearly one million people during the festival

week and visitors enjoy the attractive performance of the musicians. Throughout

these years, no fees have been paid to any musicians for their performance and even the

most famous guests come to Ferrara to perform without charge, because such are the

rules of the festival.

At the same time, only Stefano Bottoni knows what he has had to go through in order to

shape the image of the festival. Year to year, he has held lecturers to groups of musicians

and taught them the role of a street musician – how to perform for an audience, enjoy

every moment together with the audience and the tricks of winning the crowd. This

hardworking festival manager with his childish ideas is certainly the visionary and the

load-bearing pillar of the entire festival.

Another example of how a relatively small festival grows into a cultural event of national

importance is the Viljandi Folk Music Festival in Estonia. According to Ants Johanson,

the festival’s press representative, the Viljandi festival has not aimed at showing new

stars each year, but at creating an environment where every event is good. In essence, the

Viljandi Folk Music Festival is quality. Even the guests bands who come to perform at

the festival are not advertised as the main performers, because every event and concert

in the framework of the festival is important and finds its audience.

Therefore, it is theory in portent that a festival which wants to endure for years would

have its own face and policy right from the start. Festivals which attempt to show ever

bigger stars each year or shock the audience with new surprises will eventually face the

fact that there is nowhere to go. Everything has been done to entertain the audience and

there is simply nothing new or shocking anymore. The quick rise may be followed by a

sudden and heavy fall.

Likewise, a quick end can be prophesied for festivals which change too much. There were

no such festivals involved in the project, but the Falun Folk Festival in Sweden, which

was the favourite spot for many musicians in its opening years and where musicians felt

the true festivitas, i.e. the party feeling, was given as an example. For probably this very

reason it attracted a large audience who came to get a taste of the festivity of musicians

and its atmosphere. However, over the years the nature of the festival, the events and the

feeling changed so much that neither the musicians nor the audience enjoyed participating

in the festival anymore and it simply ceased to exist. The manager of this particular

festival did not change, but the face and image of the festival was changed too much and

it did not meet the expectations of the audience or the participants anymore.

Reasons for growth of festivals

Festivals, which are currently large and international, have not, according to their managers,

been created for 10-20 people. Their managers have had the ambition to organise

an international festival, to introduce the culture of other countries either through

music, films, dancing or something else, from the very start. Often festivals have grown

more quickly than their managers could have dreamt in their wildest dreams. Even more

often problems or crises have become the impetus for taking the festival to a new level.

For example, the number of the audience of the Ferrara Street Musicians Festival grew

very quickly over the years and there was a threat that after the end of the festival programme

a large number of people who have nothing to do would be out in the streets.

This sparked the need for an after-programme and therefore a new stage was built behind

the city wall. It opened late at night and unlike street musicians, it used power

amplifiers and larger musical groups could perform there. For the festival it meant the

release of an entirely new product.

The first festival and all the following festivals of the St. Petersburg’s Kannon Dance

Company came in to existence due to the need to introduce contemporary dance in

Russia. Natalya Kasparova who had a ballet education participated in contemporary

dance courses in Austria and she wanted to further her acquired skills. None of the

schools in St. Petersburg taught contemporary dance techniques and therefore Vadym

Kasparov decided to bring in a teacher from America and organise courses for all those

who were interested. Unfortunately, no recognised dance school or a theatre was interested

in the new style or wanted anything to do with the courses. Since the teacher

from America was already en route to Russia, Natalya and Vadym Kasparov decided to

organise the first chorus themselves and invite everybody in the city to participate. This

initiative gave birth to the first Kannon Dance Company festival Open Look, followed

by the National Competition for Young Choreographers, the Jazz Music and Dance Festival

and the Dance Film Festival. The latter is a festival in the course of which it is taught

how to make films for presenting and recording contemporary dance. The development

of the Kannon Dance Company is a good example of developing step by step, so that

each following step arises from the needs of the preceding step.

Such examples are typical in case of festivals which are sparked by ideas and the need

for creating something new. But how do festivals initiated by, for example, a city government,

In such events the development of the festival largely depends on the budget of the festival.

The festival manager must remain within the limits of the budget and the manager’s

professional experience helps to create a cultural programme which is fresh and novel

and attractive for the audience.

At the same time, many city festivals grow in terms of quantity, i.e. the number of participants.

For example, the Cultural Night in Uppsala, the Christmas City Festival in Turku

and the Tartu Hanseatic Days focus on the participation of local residents and cultural

players. All culture groups of the city are given the opportunity to present themselves.

In such events the duty of the festival manager is to attract as many participants as possible

and to create the “us” feeling, the feeling of belonging and the feeling of valuing one’s

city. One of the most important duties of the festival manager is to be an intermediary

between the audience and the performer, between culture and other fields of endeavour

and between local people and visitors/tourists.

Thus the international aspect will not arise from importing and introducing famous

foreign performers. Such a festival is made internationally attractive by the exhibition of

a huge concentration of local culture and values, which is interesting for domestic and

foreign tourists alike.

Why was the project necessary?

The festival managers who participated in the project confirmed that it was an interesting

experience for them to visit festivals in other countries and to exchange ideas with

the managers of these festivals. In spite of the fact that the theme, budget, duration,

organiser and many other characteristics of the festivals were very different in different

countries, the festival managers found visiting other festivals most useful.

On the one hand, it gave them an opportunity to compare themselves with others and

to evaluate themselves at the European level. On the other hand, it gave them many new

ideas, knowledge, techniques, thoughts and, above all, a very important understanding

that there are other “insane” people who have undertaken such a diffcult job and

Several festival managers and, in this particular project, especially female festival managers

admitted that the liability before the boards and all participants of the festival has

made them feel lonely and isolated. Participation in the project gave them confidence

and the knowledge that the same work is done throughout the world and that they are

on the right path.

To develop and grow festivals two essential preconditions have to be fulfilled. Firstly, an

able manager and secondly, the financial support of the local government is needed. Although

large festivals are quite often able to receive decent sums from sponsors, it is vital

that at least 50% of the budget of the festival be covered by state or municipal financiers.

Therefore, it is very important to explain to the employees of local authorities the role of

festivals in shaping the image of the city or region and in attracting tourists.

The importance of festivals in tourism increases year by year. In the world and in Europe

there are more people who are planning a weekend trip to another country at least once

a month. Upon making the choice, the decisive factor will be attractive activities in the

destination. One can go skiing in Austria, go to the opera in London or swimming in

the sea in Spain. One might as well attract people to come to a festival in Tartu, Viljandi,

Uppsala or Turku. However, to succeed one has to provide sufficient information about

the events, the country and the city.

PART ONE An overview of the festivals involved in the project

1.1 · A presentation of the festivals

Viljandi Folk Music Festival, Estonia

The Viljandi Folk Music Festival is a weekend festival focusing on traditional music.

The first of its kind took place in 1993 and it is always held on the last weekend of July.

The festival is an international one thanks to numerous foreign performers, who are at

present strongly outnumbered by local musicians. The audience is also becoming more

and more international due to the growing popularity of the festival.

There are over a hundred concerts with 400 performers, 15% of them from abroad, in

various places all over the town, 3 of them indoors (for traditional music gourmets), but

mainly in the open air (7 different stages).

The majority of the daytime events are meant for culturally open-minded pupils, students,

young families, coteries of middle-aged people, etc. Workshops, exhibitions and

seminars, that are meant not only for the professionals but for everybody showing interest,

are as important as the concerts of the festival and are mainly visited by students.

Instrument Fair and Handicraft Yard are also a natural part of the festival. The Fairy Tale

Chamber is there specially for children. Approximately 17 000 tickets are sold.

ESTONIAN ETNO, the traditional music study camp for young musicians, is a very

important part of the festival, too. It takes place a week before the festival and there are

about 100 young participants in this camp, some of them from abroad. They play traditional

tunes, dance old folk dances and play various musical instruments together.

The main purpose of the festival is to evaluate the traditional local heritage, to popularize

and teach (workshops, concerts, traditional dance sessions) old forms of traditional

music and dance. And to bring most convincing examples from abroad. And, of course,

to entertain. In addition to reviving the traditional Estonian musical heritage, the festival

gives it an opportunity to become stronger, which in turn forms the basis for “new

traditional music movement.”

When one says “Viljandi” the first things that come to mind are the Viljandi Folk Music

Festival and Viljandi Culture Academy. This small town is certainly considered to be the

“capital of folk music” by many Estonians.

Culture Night in Uppsala, Sweden

The Culture Night is a celebration of culture, manifested by local cultural workers, institutions,

amateurs and their organisations. It is a city festival initiated by a group of

professionals now engaging thousands of cultural workers, amateurs and young people.

The Culture Night started with an appeal that is still valid: culture and creativity are essential

to us all – resources must therefore be advocated loud and clear.

The festival’s organisation

The festival has maintained the same structure during 15 years. The Cultural Office of

the city acts as the co-ordinator of the entire festival, with the festival manager from the

Cultural Office staff. The management includes leading, planning, developing, marketing,

and arranging events such as an opening ceremony.

The participants are entirely responsible for funding and creating their own programs,

most of them free of charge to the public. Anyone can participate with a cultural event,

there are no limits or demands. This concept has worked well. Starting with 35 participants

1989 there were 152 in 2003, offering 365 programs in 100 places in the centre

of the city. Thousands of artists and administrators were involved (among them about

2000 musicians). There were about 100.000 visitors. The festival is steadily growing each

What is happening on the Culture Night?

The Culture Night begins already at daytime. Medieval market, knights’ tournament,

live music in the malls, dancing in the streets, speaker’s corner, brass parades, art exhibited

in shop windows are some of the events.

Cultural institutions stay open throughout the evening, offering special programs and

happenings; theatres, libraries, churches, museums, houses of dance, film, music, handicraft

and young people. Pubs, restaurants, cafés and malls have special programs.

During this time of year, mid-September, the weather allows for outdoor stages and

events. For instance: the Finnish literary epos Kalevala, performed in the Botanical Garden

by an entire school, with music, singing and fire. Fire-art in the yard of the Castle.

The art museum showing short-movies on the walls. The university museum giving

lectures for children on how to mummify a cat, chemical shows and experiments with

soap in the anatomical theatre.

The museum of evolution shows nearly invisible animals, mutations, lumps and the giant

from the blue lagoon. Hilariously funny silent movies with live piano-music at candlelight.

Open rehearsals at the City theatre, and a walk in their dressing room. Author’s

marathon, poetry readings, theatre sports. Tango dancing lectures and shows. Enjoy

chamber choirs, ladies choirs and all sorts of choirs, maybe for a sing-along opera, with

the score available on the Internet for your preparation.

There are special programs offered by institutions like the Cathedral, University museum

and library, City theatre, City library, City art museum, filled with humour and

cross-cultural references. In the Cathedral, usually about 6.000 persons attend the program

on that evening. There are, of course, special events for the young, organised by

themselves - like a stage with local bands as well as more famous ones.

The established cultural life is far from the only ones showing their work this night.

Many of Uppsala’s cultural organisations appear in the streets or indoors. Dancing tango,

flamenco, swing, folkdances or showing handicraft, advocating for peace and nonviolence,

debating, singing, public reading, sewing, lecturing, playing jazz, exhibiting

paintings and photos.

Magic for everybody

Culture Night is very much a happening you attend with your friends or your family.

Young people often visit the same programs as adults this night. Most visitors want to

see as much as possible, specially the things they would not visit otherwise (now that it

is free) or never have heard of before.

The participants on the other hand see Culture Night as an opportunity to show themselves,

to get new members, new visitors and goodwill.

Culture Night is a magical explosion of culture!

Hanseatic Days Festival in Tartu, Estonia

The history of the festival:

Tartu is a an old Hanseatic city with a rich and interesting history. The medieval festival

in Tartu is held from the year 1996. It started with an open air market and in the

first years the cultural program was a part of the market. In the last years it has grown

bigger and has turned to be more like a street festival. In the year 2002, the festival was

concentrated to four main districts, which were designed differently and each one had

a stage, performing place and its own cultural program. The districts were called : The

City of River, The City of Towers, The City of Stars, The City of Knights. Every year a

large number of amateur performers and groups take part in the festival together with

professionals from Estonia and other countries. The festival is very popular in Tartu

and serves as a visiting card of the city. Last year more than 10 000 visitors visited the

The goal of the festival:

The goal of the festival is to raise interest towards the history of the city, the medieval

times and the traditional culture of Estonia. To achieve the goal, courses, workshops,

lectures and performances are carried out throughout the year and the three-day long

The time and place of the festival:

Introductory event – the night of archaic songs took take place on 21.- 22. 06. 2003.

During the singing event, a live video link through the Internet was created between

Tartu and Turku to share folksongs and sing them together with the audience. The

event was organized for the second time and it was special for the fact that using new

technologies in the cultural context is new in Estonia.

During Medieval Days, all the performing groups from Tartu city and county have a

possibility to perform. Groups of musicians singing folksongs and early music, circus

groups, dances from the history, folk dances, and so on will be performed during these

days on five stages and numerous places throughout the city.

V. I.D.A. An International Dance Activity, Tartu, Estonia

This event comprises an International Dance Festival held in memory of Ida Urbel in

Tartu in the following buildings of Vanemuine Theatre: the Big House, the Sadamateater,

and the Small House.

On 16 December 2000, Vanemuine Theatre celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ida

Erika Elizabeth Urbel, the founder of its ballet programs. This gave rise to an idea to

organize days dedicated to dance, which would mainly aim at promoting meetings between

young talented dancers and choreographers. These initial ‘dancing days’ have now

developed into an international dance festival.

The dance festival of 2004 will be the fifth one in a row. No style is given special preference,

and the theatre welcomes both those who love modern dancing and those who

practice classical ballet; there will be dance films and exhibitions on the expressiveness

of body language (photos, etc.), and performances.

The participants of the previous festivals have been from Estonia: the Vanemuine, the

Estonia National Opera, the Fouette Ballet Theatre, the Fine Five Modern Dance Group,

Tallinn Pedagogical University, Viljandi College of Culture, Tallinn Ballet School, Ida

Dance School, Vanemuine Dance and Ballet School, the creative association of Hetero,

the SPA association, and also the National Ballets of Norway, Belgium, Denmark, England,

Finland, Russia and Latvia.

During I.D.A. IV, the plays of young choreographers R. Stepanov and J. Savolainen were

performed for the first time at the Sadamateater. Modern dance was demonstrated to its

perfection by Matteo Moles and Celine Verdan from Belgium. An active participant of

the festival was A. Kannel with his photo exhibition, an inseparable part of which was

the performance of R. Mägi. The top event of the festival was the gala concert held in the

Big House of Vanemuine on 14 December. The night was made even more beautiful by

Age Oks and Toomas Edur from the British National Ballet, who belong to the absolute

top of world-class dancers.

I.D.A. Dance Festival IV was watched by nearly 1500 people and the event was discussed

in newspapers, on radio and on Estonian TV, in the program called Tour de Dance.

In 2004, Vanemuine can offer its visitors the hall of its Big House (600 seats) and the

black box (up to 200 seats) in the Sadamateater, and also the Small House of Vanemuine

(400 seats). In addition, the organisers are looking for exclusive locations for special

projects. They aim to invite several well-known foreign visitors and the best Estonian

choreographers and dancers of modern dance to the upcoming festival, at the same time

continuing their cooperation with the participants of the previous festivals. We have

concluded an agreement with Francesco Scavetta to perform a multimedia project at

the festival, titled LIVE.

Tartu Music Festival (since 2004), Estonia

The purpose of our festival is to make Tartu more attractive for the people of Estonia

and foreign guests through interesting cultural events, to support worthy cultural

events using the Tartu Music Festival brand, providing first and foremost some quality

added value. By putting events in the centre of attention this brand will be filled with

worthy cultural events as a result of which the brand becomes stronger and adds value

to the following cultural events, which are selected to be included under the brand.

The events, arranged by the Tartu Music Festival, are musical events with top-class

performers and unique content, which renders an emotional experience that adds

value to the reputation of the City of Tartu. Currently, Tartu Music Festival is a project

and event-based operation. When the brand becomes stronger, it is possible to talk

about the image and continuity of the festival. The Tartu Gala Concert in August is

becoming a tradition.

The Tartu Music Festival is visited mainly by people of 15-65 years of age of whom

approx. 60-70% are people of Tartu. These people are interested in music, enthusiastic

about making music (they either sing in a choir or band or play a musical instrument)

and interested in summertime open-air events. As for their values and world outlook

they belong to the core of national Estonian culture. They respect traditions and value

national symbols. They often come with the whole family. Summertime domestic and

foreign tourists account for a small proportion of the audience.

The secondary target group is somewhat wealthier people who consume elite culture

either because it is part of their lifestyle or because they are educated enough to enjoy

it. On the basis of the first year it can be said that the Tartu Music Festival is by the

people of Estonia for the people of Estonia. But in 2004 they will have a performer

from England (invited in cooperation with the State Concert Institute) and they believe

that they will see more foreign guests among the audience each year.

The Tartu Music Festival Foundation has a 5-member board. The founding members

elect the board for four years. The principle is as follows: 2 members from the Tartu

City Council, 2 members from the Estonian Academy of Music and 1 member from

the Ministry of Culture.

The board adopts the annual action plan, budget and separate large-scale projects. In

practical work the organizers are assisted by various music specialists and experts of

various fields.

The mission is carried out and objectives are achieved pursuant to the action plan. The

board discusses and adopts the action plan prepared by the leader of the organization.

Primarily, the board supervises the stability of finances.

The total budget in euros is ca 100,000 €. In 2003, they sold 7,000 tickets for the gala

concert at the Tartu Festival Arena.

The future

Today, the Tartu Music Festival is known for its grandiose gala concert held in August.

In 5 years, there will be two grandiose (international) events under the aegis of

the Tartu Music Festival. In May, there will be the annual Tartu Music Days directed

mainly to young people and in August a large open-air gala concert. The TMF cooperates

with the cultural institutions of Tartu as well as with the organisers of other musical

festivals in Estonia and abroad.

Improvizz, International Improvisational Music Festival, Estonia

The festival invites the best Estonian improvisers and foreign specialists of the field to

Tartu. The audience gets to enjoy unparalleled improvisation performances. Those interested

can attend lectures on the philosophical and applied background of the art of

improvisation. For improvisation artists the festival provides a unique creative output

and a place where they can share their ideas.

The purpose of the festival is to unite the powers of all creative musicians and, in the

long run, produce such musicians.

The International Improvisational Music Festival IMPROVIZZ is aimed at filling a

gap in the cultural life of Estonia and the entire Baltic Sea region. Those who are truly

engaged in free improvisation do not have any uniform output. Participation in single

events in the framework of overburdened contemporary or jazz music festivals hardly

creates any adequate resonance among the cultural public, the audience and critics,

which could match the level of those engaged in the field. Free improvisers have much

greater potential. The academic branch of improvisers and the jazz branch have been

rather separated. IMPROVIZZ suggests a solution though joint outputs and creative

Through its novel approach the festival considerably diversifies the Estonian musical

A large portion of young people who attend the lectures or visit the concerts will become

teachers and educators in the field of fine arts some day. Through them the spark

of creativity will spread to various education institutions as well.

As an event which encourages free and creative thinking in music (also in drama,

dancing, etc.), IMPROVIZZ matches nicely the city’s slogan: “Tartu – City of Good

Thoughts”. The festival combines the best Estonian improvisers, the unique free improvisation

school, foreign musicians and the atmosphere of Tartu as a student city, in

order to bring the potential of the innovative thought of IMPROVIZZ both in Estonia

and in a broader region to the forefront.

Through free improvisation, attention is drawn to the sound of the audio landscape

in the moment of existence in the reality of every one of us. The creative force of the

inner freedom of people and the method used in teaching improvisation for setting it

free are introduced though lectures.

Through lectures and improvisation performances the perception of the human existence

and thus, the participation in a greater improvisation – LIFE – will be actualised

in the audience.

Soup City Days (Supilinn) festival in Tartu, Estonia

Tartu is a special city. A special part of this special city is the Supilinn district. It has

added flavour through greenery, wooden architecture, students, drunkards, and bohemian

artists and musicians. This city district, which is located at a 5-minute walk from

the city centre, is bordered by the local brewery on one side and the Emajõgi River on

the other. Owing to a low rent level, many current Estonian intellectuals have lived in

Supilinn during their studies in university.

Given this very background, an idea to organise the Supilinn Days in Tartu was

sparked in 2002. Today, the Supilinn Days have become an interdisciplinary suburban

festival, which combines art, music, drama, literature, folklore, education and

science. Through the suburban phenomenon, attention is drawn to the role of creative

activities as the shaper of the human environment. The Supilinn Days introduce the

significant role of the peripheral cultural phenomena in complex cultural processes

on a broader scale.

The suburban phenomenon is closely connected to all cities of the world, constituting

a buffer between the spirit-centred and power-centred ways of thinking. This gives the

Supilinn district an excellent opportunity for cooperation with other suburbs both in

Estonia and abroad.

Tartu Supilinn Days includes the following:

Excursions: various excursions introducing the history, culture and natural

environment of Supilinn;

Art: various photography projects on suburbs are presented, exhibition sales of

young artists are opened and the event is recorded in photos and video. Museums

and libraries have displays about Supilinn;

Music: performances by musical groups related to Supilinn;

Theatre: folk and other plays are staged in the yards of Supilinn;

Cinema: films about suburbs are shown in an open-air cinema; For children: sports

games and quizzes are organised and plays are staged for children, children can help

clean up the city district;

Academic lectures: lectures about the architecture, history, geology, folklore and

culture semiotic phenomenon of the suburb and the place of the suburb in the

landscape of domestic economy and crime;

The human environment is improved in cooperation with the local government;

Media: in the week of organisation of the festival, articles and programmes about the

history, culture, current state and possible developments of Supilinn are published in

the media;

Other attractions: a boatman on the Emajõgi River, Supilinn market,

portraying people.

Organisers and partners

The organiser is the Supilinn Society in cooperation with cultural institutions, museums,

art schools and youth organisations of Tartu. Various working parties consisting

of specialists and other interested people are engaged in ensuring the success of the

event in terms of art, music, the media, children’s activities, heritage, the environment,

drama, literature and technology.

Supilinn Days has brought about an “awakening of Supilinn,” which has spread to a

number of other districts of Tartu and they have started to organise their city district

days as well. www.supilinn.ee

Regiöö, Festival of Archaic Art in Tartu, Estonia

Regiöö is an international and interdisciplinary festival of archaic art, which presents

the worldview and traditions from Estonia as well as the Baltic area in general through

music, dance, traditional food and handicraft. The event focuses on the special features

of the Estonian local cultural heritage amidst the archaic traditions of Europe.

During this festival a song-bridge takes place, available to internet users all over the

world, and presents Estonia as a region with innovative thought. Here the archaic

supports of the cultural ground meet with innovative technology, thus generating an

information technology space for our ancestral worldview.

The target group of the event is everyone who values unique heritage of their ancestors,

and its applications designed for the future.

In the centre of the Festival of Archaic Art stands the runo song in its original, syncretic

environment – daily routines, tools, clothing and food intertwined with music and

singing. In their concerts and workshops the specialists of different fields will help us

create this kind of environment.

The patroness of the festival is ethnomusicologist Ingrid Rüütel.

Regiöö 2003 consists of the following components:

Concerts of archaic song, folk hymns and runo song transformations from

different countries;

Workshops: Singing of runo songs with the specialists, who also explain mythological

backgrounds of the songs;

Storytelling workshops: Fairytales and other stories from Estonian tradition as well

as other countries;

Dancing corner - Free stage: Old songs, dances and round dances from Estonia

and other countries;

Joint singing with the help of RealVideo: Joint singing of archaic songs via internet

bridge between Tartu and its partners.

University Spring Days, Tartu, Estonia

The tradition of organising Spring Days dates back to the middle of the 1970’s. The University

Spring Days form an all-around cultural and youth festival. The aim of the festival

is to introduce student life and the spirit of the university and to offer an especially

exciting and versatile programme to all tastes. The Spring Days provide an opportunity

to get to know student life and the charms of the City of Tartu.

Today, the University Spring Days have developed into a spectacular cultural event

which unites students with other citizens of Tartu and attracts lots of visitors to the city.

In the framework of the University Spring Days of 2003 about one hundred different

events were held which had approximately 60,000 onlookers.

University Spring Days usually take place in the last days of April and the beginning of

The most popular events of the University Spring Days:

Student Song is a contest in which the best student song of the year is chosen. In

the past years, several singers or musicians who have become famous today

performed in the Student Song contest.

Student Fair is a place where one can buy everything from cribs and lecture notes to

a cap that guarantees good luck at an exam. The only condition is that the objects for

sale have to be homemade.

Costume relay race is a competition where not only the speed and skills but also

wit and inventiveness count.

Bamboo is a race for homemade vehicles in which the most stylish and endurable

will be the winner.

Rubber boat rally is the spring hit on the Emajõgi River with a number of teams

in boats testing their speed and skills.

Turku, the Christmas City of Finland

As the oldest city in Finland, Turku is the home of the Finnish Christmas culture.

Many European Christmas traditions have been spread via Turku to the rest of Finland.

In its historical role in spreading and maintaining Christmas traditions, Turku

annually celebrates Christmas from the end of November to St. Knut’s Day on 13 January,

the closing day of the season in the old times. Due to these facts, Turku City Board

decided in 1996 to declare Turku the Christmas City of Finland.

Christmas City organisation

The City of Turku founded a Project Office in 1996 whose task is to compile the Christmas

City programme into a single whole and manage the project in collaboration with

the Christmas City team. Comprising of people from different administrative bodies

of the city and the biggest event organisers, the Christmas City team is assisting the

Project Office. Since the very beginning, a local advertising agency has been involved

in building the Christmas City. This advertising agency produces marketing material,

provides communication services and finds sponsors.

In its annual budget, the City of Turku determines a Christmas City budget for the

Project Office, amounting to € 160,000 in 2004. The city pays € 60,000 of the budget

to the advertising agency that secures 3-5 times that much money from sponsors. The

funds obtained from the sponsors are spent on marketing the Christmas City; including

local and national printed media advertising, brochures, TV advertising, website

maintenance and a programme leaflet that is distributed to all households in the Turku

economic region. Advertising campaigns vary from year to year.

The Christmas City does not charge the event organisers for joint marketing and communication;

the marketing is free for them. Consequently, they can focus their resources

on providing content. Event producers, both the administrative bodies of the

city and other organisers, have their own budgets for arranging the events. Sponsors

are not sought for event production, but for joint marketing. The annual Christmas

City budget also covers the Christmas look of the city, including lights and decorations,

as well as the production costs of a few outdoor events.

Christmas City of Finland Turku is packed with events

The festive opening of the Christmas City at Turku Market Square starts a 7-week

period of activities. In 2003, there were more than 400 events of a wide variety. The

period is divided into three different themes. Before Christmas, they focus on waiting

for Christmas. Christmas Eve and the holidays are traditionally spent quietly, concentrating

on the message of peace. The time after the holidays until St. Knut’s Day is a

carnival period. Christmas City events comprise both large outdoor events and smallscale

occasions e.g. in churches. Some are free of charge to the audience and for some

there is a charge. Each event organiser can keep all entrance ticket income.

Apart from the opening of the Christmas City, one of the biggest annual events is the

Christmas Market in the Old Great Square. It is arranged at the old marketplace of

Turku next to Turku Cathedral, the Finnish national shrine, on three weekends. There

are traditional Finnish handicrafts and unique products by artisans available on the

The best known of the Christmas traditions of Turku is the declaration of the Christmas

Peace that takes place in front of the Brinkkala house in the Old Great Square on

Christmas Eve.

The declaration of the Christmas Peace has been complemented with a new tradition

in recent years: the ecumenical appeal for peace by bishops of four denominations in

Turku Cathedral. Brought by a different person each year, the humanitarian message

of peace has been declared, for example, by Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson

and the former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari.

There are a number of theatres and dance theatres in Turku. Their programme also

includes annually changing shows related to Christmas.

Many orchestras and performers have included a special Christmas programme in

their repertoire. Museums of Turku arrange various Christmas exhibitions and tours.

Many historical museums display Christmas food traditions of different centuries,

from the Middle Ages on.

From the very beginning, Turku has been developed into the Christmas City of Finland

through collaboration of many actors, taking the local identity and characteristics

into account. The target groups vary from one event to another, and thus the

Christmas City can offer a diverse programme package to different parties. The advantage

of joint marketing is that individual event organisers can join a large, professionally

managed marketing and communication campaign which they otherwise

could not afford. The size of the audience in the events has grown steadily. There are

more activities available and the quality of the events is higher. At the same time, event

organisers have started different co-operation projects that reach beyond the 7-week

period of Christmas programme.

The Ferrara Buskers Festival, Italy

The Ferrara Buskers Festival is a non-competitive parade of the best street musicians

in the world. It takes place during the last whole week in August. In terms of tradition

and dimension it is the most important festival of this kind. In 2002 about 800,000

people, coming from anywhere in Italy and with a remarkable presence of foreign

tourists, crowded the 200,000 square metres of the beautiful medieval and Renaissance

stage in the historical centre of the town. Every year the organization invites 20

groups at its own expense, but beside them many others join the festival. Last time, 177

different shows were performed by a total of 660 artists coming from 21 different countries.

The result is fantastic: during the week of the festival Ferrara is transformed into

a music town, a city to play, where any corner unveils new atmospheres, between old

and new tunes, to the discovery of familiar or unknown sonorities. And so everybody

by bike or on foot is ready to follow, in the wide spaces surrounding the Este Castle

and the beautiful Cathedral, the engaging rhythms of the African drums, the cheerful

atmospheres of a dixie band or the crazy gags of some English groups; advancing

forward the narrow medieval streets you can be guided by the sound of a Celtic harp,

or sit down on the pavement to appreciate the emotional notes of an Argentine tango,

or follow, as the little mice of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the distant echo of a flute. Any

kind of music at the Ferrara Buskers Festival has the right of citizenship, and there

are also some “virtuosos” playing the most original instruments: saws, washboards,

cowbells, teachests, crystal glasses have made the audience discover unexpected melodious

potentialities. The buskers’ music becomes in this way the soundtrack of an

ideal journey through the thousand world-wide cultures and the occasion for many

people to discover a beautiful town that was able in the past centuries to fascinate the

travellers with its silence and now it can win them over with the polychromy of notes,

faces and clothes.

Some numbers about the festival:

800.000 presences, 190.000 square metres of the show area (only the pedestrian

zone). 177 different performances (20 invited and 157 fringe), 660 artists: 584 Italian

and 76 foreign coming from 21 nations, 1044 shows corresponding to 2296 hours of

performances. If the artists had performed one after the other there would have been

96 days of a non stop show.

1.2 · An analysis of the key issues concerning

the management of the festivals

In the frame of the project Transforming a local festival into an international festival :

How to produce a professional, image building city festival, forty questions have been

posed to the eleven festivals partners (from Estonia, Finland, Italy and Sweden), concerning

aspects of identity, management and organization, financial balances, activities

and programs, audience and target groups, communication and promotion.

This chapter provides a summary of the results, stressing the common patterns and

challenges. A synoptic analysis reporting questions and answers is provided in AN-

NEX 1: A synthetic analysis of the eleven festivals questionnaires, reporting key data.

The main aspect emerging from the analysed festivals is a strong and diffused local

dimension, not only in terms of a local context, but deeper, in the identity and basic

reasons of the festivals. A significant role is played by traditions, approached with a diffused

tentative innovating spirit. Traditional cultural heritage is perceived as a common

value to protect and appreciate, finding new functions to revive it, using innovative

tools, creative solutions, new ideas and new technologies. The local feeling and the

desire to promote local identity all over the world go together with a diffused international

feeling, aiming at connecting local and international dimensions, both inviting

internationals artists - less often involving international partners and institutions -,

and diffusing a worldwide , specially by the internet and relational communication

tools. The purpose to promote and enrich the local cultural resources is stronger than

a reputation / excellence oriented strategy. A real local involvement seems to be more

important than promoting a local image. Also, creating chances addressing especially

young and local people (artists, students, audience) confirms a general participatory

aim that seems to be more deployed than the proposition for a more passive consumption

and entertainment. In general, in the analysed festivals the cultural purpose is

by far stronger than the commercial aim as a basic motivation. If opting for a specific

model for the festival seems to be an irrelevant aspect, continuity along the years, finding

new solutions for each edition, seems to be a natural characteristic.

The analysed festivals mainly have a relatively reduced dimension, often due to the

specific theme of the festival (e.g. the runo songs of Baltic Sea Region), which means a

short duration (one to few days, with a couple of exceptions), a relatively contained territorial

area of activities (from one or more venues to a suburb or a whole city), small

budgets (with some exceptions), narrow net of partners and support sources, a limited

organizing structure. The small-to-medium dimension of the analysed festivals does

not mean a small audience or reputation: the festivals seem to be generally well-known

and frequented, not just by local people but often by a mixed audience coming from

the whole region as well as from the neighbouring areas and from abroad.

In terms of the financial balance, sponsors cover about the 25% for most of the festivals,

in some cases just a 5%, without influencing the programming choices and

communication strategies. Earned income is not so relevant (from 5% to 10%), also

because most of the analysed festivals are based on free of charge events, but in some

cases earned income from tickets, merchandising and publications reaches a significant

level (60%). Financial contribution of the public authorities (municipal, regional,

national) has a varied relevance, covering from 30% to 75% of the total budget.

A significant feature is the almost total lack of relations – and relative financial support

- with private foundations and the European Commission; only a few tried to

apply. This characteristic seems in part due to the small dimension of some festivals

(with reduced needs, few human resources), and in part to a declared lack of competences,

in some cases perceived as a critical aspect. Budgets range from 7.000 up to

450.000 euros.

Informal boards are generally responsible for managing the festival. A more structured

organization is often due to the direct relation with a local institution (in some

case the festival board is the culture municipality board). A frequent characteristic

is the involvement of different kinds of collaborators, not necessarily professionals.

Volunteers involvement is common in many cases since almost half of the analysed

festivals include volunteers’ working contribution. Other festivals declare the interest

to open the festival to the volunteers in the next years, just as a few also include marginalized

or underprivileged or disadvantageous social groups who like helping the

festival. In general, volunteers‘ involvement in managing or running a festival seems

to be not so structured, mostly appearing as spontaneous and dynamic.

Artistic strategies, including inviting performers and producing new work, are not

specially developed. Artists are engaged by local involvement as well as by invitation,

on the basis of different sources of information, from direct visits to references, from

performing together to looking at video tapes or listening to demos. Production of

new works is not at all frequent, practiced just by a few festivals, mostly oriented toward

a professional promotion of artistic new works (e.g. the International Dance Activity

– IDA Festival in Tartu).

Concerning the programs and activities, debates and public discussions with artists

are not at all present. Workshops, seminars and master classes are organized, not only

addressing the professionals but also open to the general public, particularly students

and children. There are no special activities addressed to senior citizens.

Almost all the festivals declare to influence in some way the image of the city, contributing

to local cultural life.

Audiences are generally described as ‘those interested in culture’ - a somewhat vague

definition – and their composition includes different target groups, such as local citizens,

students, young people, families and tourists, as well as professionals and amateurs.

Among the special approaches employed to reach other target groups, the following

are mentioned by the festivals: intimate concerts for specialists, open events

without charge, exciting programs responding to the expectation of the youth, innovative

advertising, bonus tickets for families, lectures and workshops, more events for

local residents or events for linguistic and cultural minorities.

The core audience is identified mainly in terms of the following groups: university

students, young people, local inhabitants, families, followed by domestic and foreign

tourists. Almost noone of the eleven festivals studies its audience with specific instruments,

restricting themselves in general to the “visual” analysis of the audience, but

aiming in the future to approach it in a more professional way. In a few cases audience

surveys are carried out by a different subject than the festival; in one case organizers

interview people during the festival.

As far as promotion and communication are concerned, there are similar strategies to

ensure a media coverage of the festival, centred on the press release, relations with the

journalists, reporters and experts, PR work and personal contacts. In some cases more

importance is given to ‘creative and unexpected ideas for media’. Information is often

updated and diffused throughout the whole year, but there is also an awareness of a

need to work out a specific long-term communication plan.

The most effective communication tools are the same for almost everyone, with a relatively

insignificant difference in priority of relevance: TV and radio, press, printed

media (flyers, newspaper advertisements, programs, posters and street advertising),

internet website; special TV programs and interviews are less frequent, and still less

developed is the informal communication and the PR work.

A very modest and unsteady effort is made by the festivals to document systematically

their own work by collecting and systematizing the memory of the festival. If

the general tendency is to archive documentation, in some cases also with photos,

registrations and video documentation, it is often perceived as an inadequate way to

keep memory, looking for a more detailed documentation system. Just in one case the

corporate memory of the festival is ensured by keeping documentation in two city

libraries, a private one and the public one.

To the more personal question of what previous experiences have been most useful to

manage a festival, the answers state that previous artistic, cultural and relational experiences

have been as useful and important as the professional experiences connected

with specific managing skills.

The most useful networks seem to be the informal ones among professionals, artists,

operators and organizers worldwide, followed by relations with similar festivals and

the personal net of contacts. The risk of crisis seems fairly irrelevant: few have experienced

some, due to incidental unexpected events (the Swedish foreign minister fatally

stabbed just before the festival; sudden unexpected death of the initiator of the festival

idea), or other external causes such as the weather problems (cold, rain) or some contextual

problems (locations) or simply because of unfavourable criticism from press.

Only one festival stresses the importance ‘to foresee every problem and be able to find

quick compromises’.

Projections in the future show a general expectation to improve in several aspects:

increasing artistic and cultural quality, reinforcing and diversifyng the sources of income

such as the European Commission, sponsorship and merchandising, sponsorships,

prolonging the duration of the festival and enlarging its activities, enhancing

the programs every year so as to keep interest alive, obtaining an international recognition,

improving young professionals skills and opportunities, increasing cooperation

with local and international institutions, improving the relationship with the

From the comparison and analyses of the eleven festivals questionnaires, the main

critical weakness emerging can be resumed as follows:

a tendency to follow standard tools and practices, with a not so prominent creative

effort to find more adequate instruments and topics as regards position,

management and development of the festival;

a lack of professional competences, especially in project management

and fundraising;

a not so functional organization and deployment of specific roles and human

resources (e.g. the need to cover some neglected aspects such as documentation,

volunteers involvement, etc.)

unexploited potentialities of relationships, partnerships and support;

the lack of effort and instruments in monitoring audience;

the lack of attention and instruments in evaluating the festival experience and

in communication with the policy makers and public opinion, in order to

demonstrate the role, the potential and the impact on the local community .

Festivals and the persons in charge of answering the questionnaires:

Viljandi Folk Music Festival, Ants Johanson – Press Director

Uppsala Culture Night, Elise Rhodin - Director, Culture Officer of

Uppsala Municipality

Hanseatic Days Festival in Tartu, Ülle Külv - Director

International Dance Activity – IDA festival in Tartu, Mare Tommingas - Director

Tartu Music Festival, Juta Kuhlberg - Director

Festival Improvizz in Tartu, Aleksander Sünter

Soup City Days Festival in Tartu, Aleksander Sünter

Regiöö, Aleksander Sünter - Director

Tartu Student Spring Days, Marleen Parman, Kulno Kungla

Turku the Christmas City of Finland, Maarit Keto – Seppälä Project Manager,

Turku City Project Office

Ferrara Buskers Festival, Simona Callegari - Assistant to Stefano Bottoni

(Artistic Director)

PART TWO Challenges and Strategies

2. 1. · The virtues and limitations of a local festival

Could there be a more obvious way to give a boost to the local cultural circumstances

in a town or a city than to start a festival? Thousands of cultural operators have come

to this idea and many have succeeded to shape a unique and much appreciated formula.

Many others started a festival only because everyone else is running one, without

developing a sharpened sense of distinction, and remaining in an imitative mode.

Whoever thinks of initiating a festival had better consider the following questions:

what is the artistic purpose of this festival? who needs this festival? who will constitute

its primary audience? who will benefit from the festival and how? how will this festival

be different from all others taking place in the surroundings or in the country? This

questions deserve clear and straightforward answers as a starting point of a developmental

strategy that will gradually make the festival possible, ensure proper artistic

collaborations, adequate financial support, enthusiastic audience response, much attention

of the media and a strong educational and civic impact.

In a smaller town, where there is not much outstanding cultural activity, a festival

could be an excellent vehicle to mobilize and pool together all cultural forces and

resources available and condense in a relatively short time a festival program of merit

and quality, bringing to the audience especially attractive offerings. The coalescence of

forces, talents and aspirations could provide a lasting benefit, more trust and mutual

understanding and more readiness and willingness among cultural operators to

work together. Festival becomes more than just an intensive series of special events,

packaged in one communication formula and a limited time span: it becomes a tool of

cultural development on the local level, a strategy to attract new audiences and supporters,

and strengthen the position of arts in the local social and economic life. The

special event is geared towards some continuity, shared expectations and responsibilities,

strives to consolidate the available infrastructure and sustain for a longer time the

curiosity festival events provoke among the public.

Soon, however, the ambitions tend grow and so does curiosity. Festival organizers seek

to involve artistic forces from the region or the country in order to offer more diverse

programming. And if they can find material resources, they will soon be thinking of

an international component of their program. Immediately a discussion might ensue

to what extent is the festival still of local character. Or differently phrased, what makes

a festival local: the artists in the program coming from the immediate surroundings,

or the audience that is of local origin?

The cultural consequences of economic globalization surpass to a great extent such

questions and make them irrelevant. Hardly anything in Europe can be strictly local

any longer: population changes by migration, artistic communities are transformed

by guest appearances and nomadically inclined members; styles, ideas, trends and innovative

cultural practices pass the boundaries of territories, cultures and languages.

To insist on a strictly local character of festival in terms of political and social support,

economic impact, targeted audience and artistic talent promises little prospect of

development and growth and entails the risks of stagnation and parochialism. Even a

smaller community will embark on a festival adventure in the hope of attracting visitors

form the outside, some tourists perhaps, and strive to combine cultural uniqueness

with economic opportunities such as additional jobs or outside investments. In

very small places, the major motives for a festival are often predominantly driven by

tourism interests, that is economical rather than artistic objectives. There is nothing

inherently wrong in this duality of purposes as long as those objectives could be held

clearly apart as different developmental dimensions, if all involved reach a consensus

what must be the priority, if they are as stakeholders capable of managing the emerging

tension in contradictory expectations, without enmeshment and crossing agendas,

thus avoiding conflict, blaming and disappointments.

If in a very small place festival brings a boost to normal cultural life, in a larger city,

where much happens through the normal cultural season anyhow, a festival makes

sense only if it brings something unusual and extraordinary that the regular programming

of the venues is not capable of providing. In this situation, an international festival

is not a sheer continuation of the theater season but a peak in a strong regular

programming that seek to surprise and provoke.

The context, as shaped by the place and its cultural infrastructure and program richness,

determines the sense and the function of each festival as it strives to enhance the

local advantages with international elements. Take Venice, a city of remarkably rich

theater history where in the 17 and 18th century several theaters offered every evening

a varied repertory to several thousand viewers. Today, Venice abounds in museums,

churches and architectural splendors but Venetians are forced to go even for a cinema

across the lagoon, to Mestre, and their city offers throughout the year hardly any

quality concerts and theater performance. After much procrastination and criminal

mismanagement, the opera La Fenice, gutted by fire in 1996, was rebuilt and festively

opened in November 2003 - only to be closed for another year of final works. Only

from 2005 one could hope La Fenice will offer 3-4 performances a week. Otherwise,

performing arts are scarcely represented in Venice and therefore the Biennale programming

at the end of every second summer gives a chance to bring special productions

that will match the extraordinary richness of the visual arts exhibit and pool

art connoisseurs as well as tourists. Unfortunately, in the last few editions, Biennale

could not afford more than 2-3 productions, a skeleton festival as it were, not much

to make a point, too short to appeal much to the tourists and too brief to make a real

difference for the inhabitants. After the Biennale, Venice slides back in the performing

arts swamp.

An opposite case is L’Automne de Paris, a much stretched, almost 3 months long affair,

more an internationals season then a compact festival, with featured productions running

along all the standard venues and companies. It is meant as an extra programming

layer to what already exists in Paris and not only in terms of domestic production

but also in addition to a steady international programming such as Odeon, Théâtre de

la Ville, Bobigny or Théâtre de la Bastille systematically provide throughout

the season. L’Automne de Paris is an expression of political will of subsidy givers more

than a matter of special programming urgency, closing some existing gaps. On the

Dutch island of Terschelling in the Northern Sea the Oerel festival for over 20 years

mobilizes the entire community of residents, some 2000 people, and a series of international

environmental productions, squeezed into 2 weeks and 3 weekends, brings

some 60.000 visitors. The festival has become the key factor of the tourist appeal of the

island and is responsible for a huge part of its economic turnover. Through day and

night, rain or shine, visitors cross the island on bicycles and on foot to watch productions

in the dunes, on the beach, in the barns. Once festival is gone by the end of June,

Terschelling remains a popular tourist destination during the summer months but

without much cultural programming . Then, from October until June, a long silence

engulfs a community of ex-fishermen turned tourist entrepreneurs and festival operators.

These 3 randomly chosen examples indicate that what makes the existing festival

map in Europe so remarkable is indeed the diversity of festival options as much as

their sameness; the festival engagement in tiny villages, small towns, medium size

cities and major cultural centers; the intertwined artistic aspirations and economic

expectations; the strong international dimension and the primary dependence on local

resources. While the festivals as a common phenomenon and as a specific artistic

endeavor certainly reveal some influences of globalization, they also articulate – at

least in the very best cases – eloquent answers to the challenges of globalization, in

their creative synergy of local and international elements.

2. 2. · The challenge of internationalisation:

why internationalize and how?

The growing international dimension of the cultural production and distribution cannot

be explained only as a matter of fashion. Increased communication means and

mobility, explosive raise of tourism, world markets and trade shape the general conditions

for the present-day festival boom. Even though many festivals were initiated

in Europe after the World War 2, the end of the Cold War in 1989 created a culturalpolitical

constellation in which international festivals could prosper and operate with

more autonomy from the political and ideological agendas of the national govern-

ments. In most cases, the international orientation of a festival came from the needs

and aspirations of cultural operators and was adopted, modified and supported by

the interests of the public authorities. Individual cultural operators – usually strong

pioneering personalities, capable of recruiting supporters and followers, embark on

festival development driven by some artistic motivations while the public authorities

offer their support on the basis of their political considerations and interests, as an instrument

of prestige enhancement, for the sake of political influence through cultural

ambassadorship and hosting or economic advantage, drawn from the festival appeal

to the tourists.

The festivals are not the only form of internationalization of contemporary cultural

communication but are the most common and most widely practiced. Why? There is

something eminently simple and inherently complex in every festival operation. 5 or

25 productions, made in different places, brought together and presented in a row in

one place in a synchronized production and logistic effort, with common communication

and marketing and supposed (but not always evident) unifying artistic orientation

or purpose. This is the festival formula in nuce. But why this enormous effort,

this complex logistic machinery, this enormous marketing campaign, this substantial

investment of public authorities and private sponsors?

Traditionally, international dimension in cultural manifestations was seen as a proof

of prestige. Today, it can hardly mean that automatically since the products of the

cultural industry - as trivial as they can sometimes be - have been made for an international

market and are distributed internationally with efficiency. Most artists will

admit that they strive to gain international experiences not so much for the sake of

prestige and market enlargement as for the sake of inspiration. Moving away from

one’s own local professional circumstances and be confronted with an unknown

professional milieu, audience and critics is perceived as a challenge and often as an

inspiring experience. Working internationally means in fact running away from the

predictability and stifling familiarity of one’s own local circumstances. It is testing

own artistic strengths and is an eminently a learning experience – observe and absorb

how others work in your own field, what they think, how they operate and collaborate,

what they convey and how they are received? This is what keeps many performing

artists today travelling frequently and putting up with the tiresome routine of airporthotel-

rehearsal- hotel- performance- airport.

Until some 15 years ago festivals were the major model of international artistic mobility

and practically the only way for productions and artists to travel and perform

somewhere else. Today, an increasing number of venues, especially in larger cities, has

as part of their mission the task to show international arts in continuity, by bringing

various productions for several evenings. International touring thus is dependent not

only on the huge festival infrastructure but even more on the emerging network of the

hosting venues with international programming.

Programming internationally means in fact pooling a specific production out of its

native context and fitting it in the receptive context of a festival or of a venue’s international

season, a delicate intercultural transfer where habits, traditions, styles, curiosities

and of course language play a role. A programmer takes considerable risks in

such an operation, hoping to surprise and challenge own audience with something

unexpected and yet engaging, to jolt and provoke the receptive habits of the audience.

On a minimalist level, a programmer is offering an information how the performing

arts are made elsewhere, hoping to expand the knowledge and understanding of its

own core audience. On another, more ambitious level, the programmer hopes to affect

the creative patterns in his/her own performing arts context and stimulate them by introducing

a piece from abroad from some previously unexpected artistic development.

On a more abstract level, one could see the international programming as a conscious

investment in the intercultural competence of the audience, a carefully organized experience

that aims to make the public respect, understand and appreciate the cultural

difference as embodied in the imported performance.

Increasingly, festivals appear not only as presenters but as producers as well. They do

seek interesting productions made elsewhere to bring to their own program but also

strive to create new work in an international context, by bringing together artists from

different cultures and countries. Almost every self-respecting festival appears today in

the role of the producer or co-producer as well as presenter. For a festival, engaging in

a new production is a way to affirm its own value and purpose, its specific function of

creating new artistic capital and to take pride in operating as an artistic catalyst that

enables different artists to work together on a new piece – something that normally

would not take place. Increasingly theatre companies also produce work involving international

artists, and not just invite a guest director, choreographer or stage designer

from abroad, but through complex partnerships, thus following the working model

developed by the festivals.

Even though the notion of the national state has been significantly eroded in the last

few decades, there is still the tendency to see international cultural cooperation as an

engagement of nations and states and not primarily as a relationship of artists among

themselves. Among festival directors one could find a fair amount of opportunistic

operators as anywhere else – I am referring to those who will one season focus on the

performing arts from Portugal and another that of Poland, caring in fact not much for

the either but seeing this an easy way to obtain funds from the Portuguese and then the

Polish government while claiming that they fulfil a mission of European significance

and that they introduce their audience to the cultural diversity of Europe. For more sophisticated

festival directors in the role of presenters and producers, the programming

choice is made on the basis of the artists and companies involved and not countries of

origin. A programming bloc or a new production on the festival program is emerging

from the ambition to introduce or to couple specific artistic talents and not to hang up

a flag of this or that country in exchange for a chunk of government subsidy.

In most cases, festivals, venues, and companies engaged in international co-productions

are in fact achieving a sort of international co-financing by pooling their resources

and sharing the risks inherent to this sort of endeavours. When they bring together

various artistic visions and talents from different countries, when the co-production

is of a multilateral rather than bilateral character, the risks raise considerably but the

artistic opportunities as well. In a multilateral co-production, the intercultural competence

of everyone involved is put to a hard test. The sense of time, shaping of one’s

own role and responsibilities, structures of attention and concentration, hierarchical

relationships, tempo in the creative process and so many other aspects of the common

metier are very divergent and much conditioned by national histories, traditions, habits

and routines. In an international co-production these cultural differences need to

be smoothened out and negotiated in order to realize the core artistic objectives of the

endeavour which presupposes some risks, misunderstandings and conflict-prone situations,

even the possibility of a failure, caused not just by l’incompabilité d’humour

but rather l’incompabilité culturelle. It is the role of the co-producers and esp. of the

executive producer to anticipate this risk and diffuse possible tensions and destructive

impulses in the artistic process.

2. 3. · How to create a synergy of international and local needs,

concerns and components

The danger accosting programmers of international festivals is that they will neglect

their local resources and cultural needs while chasing steadily foreign attractions. An

international program orientation of a festival should seek a proper domestic context

and develop it if necessary. Just assuming that at home there is plenty of curiosity for

the international developments and that therefore their inclusion in the program will

be enough is a serious misjudgement: there are always artistic forces and parts of the

cultural infrastructure at home that will feel sidetracked and neglected by the international

emphasis of a raising festival. Those resources could be seen as potentially

the core support group of the festival, but only if properly involved and nurtured into

stakeholders rather than left aside as sulky rivals. The best strategy is to seek how the

international programming elements of a festival could develop the local resources

and give them an inspiration and a validation of their own strivings, make them less

lonely or marginalized in the domestic context. If this can be achieved, local artistic

community members will not feel overshadowed by foreign presence at the festival but

encouraged and recognized. In the best case, local talent will also be featured in the

festival program and by the programming context connected with the international

productions. Moreover, a festival program can contain elements that are clearly signals

of good will and a developmental investment in the local talent: workshops and

master classes, special debates, intimate semi-open encounters of foreign guests with

local colleagues…

Beside this policy of good will and generosity towards the local artistic community,

a responsible and intelligent festival director will seek to develop a relationship with

the infrastructure of the civic society in its own place and thus deploy the festival for

the creation both of the artistic and social capital. Originally, the tradition of festivals

is linked to the local festivities, celebrations and communal holidays which provided

models for the intermingling of ritual and artistic elements and symbolic rendering of

social relations, hierarchies and privileges. Today, most festivals have lost this celebratory

energy and the capacity to involve in the festive manner various constituencies

of the local community. One could also argue that most festivals cater to a very small

social group of artistic and intellectual elite or to transitory social groups such as

tourists rather than to a broad community of the local residents. In order to justify the

disposition of public subsidies, public authorities with increased frequency demand

festivals to enlarge and diversify their core audience, to prove that they are making

their best to surpass the boundaries of an elite public.

To fulfill this mandate simply as a marketing operation usually is not enough. Local

communities contain too much divergence and too many specific constituencies to be

approached through a marketing mix alone. Clever festival directors have learned that

they need to identify and nurture their own ambassadors in various constituencies

and that they can extract more curiosity and engagement by interacting with carefully

chosen local civic groups. Building a relationship means in turn sharing responsibility

and making the members of local civic groups participants and not just consumers.

That was the strategy deployed by Peter Sellars in 1990 and 1992 in the Los Angeles

International Festival, when he decided to anchor the visiting theater companies

from the Pacific Rim in many ethnic neighbourhoods of Los Angeles. Sellars in fact

promoted the artistic and social infrastructure of these ethnic neighbourhoods into

the role of a primary host, thus ensuring the critical mass of curiosity for the work

imported but also creating a tension between traditional and innovative arts, from the

homeland and from the diasporic communities.

In preparing the program of Copenhagen Cultural Capital of Europe 1997, Trevor

Davies started already in 1993 and consciously focused on young teenagers who were

expected to become his prime audience when the mega-festival of almost 11 months

length was to start few years later. Equally, he realized the constraints of Copenhagen

as a relatively small city and set up collaborative ties with some 50 neighbouring

communities, working with their public officials in order to link them to his complex

programming. Generational focus and regionalisations were his strategies to sustain a

festival of huge programming volume. And yet, as it often happens with the Cultural

Capitals of Europe program, the saturation point of the audience was reached in a few

months only, much before the end of the festivities.

Within a modern metropolis, a festival could be seen as a tool to rephrase centre/periphery

polarisations and dichotomies. LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre)

decided some years ago to bring challenging contemporary art work to the tough

communities of London and test their hospitality through involvement in the in situ

productions. Trust building achieved locally turned into a social capital that was immediately

shared with the LIFT core audience. LIFT steady spectators made an uneasy

journey to an unknown and ill reputed territory - only to encounter there warmth,

attentive care and safety. Placing the LIFT production in such a tough neighbourhood

was not just an exercise to peel off some of the prevailing social prejudices and counter

the urban legends of danger and hostility zones but an effort to consolidate the local

civic society through positive engagement and responsibility and thus factually make

the neighbourhood more friendly and safer.

Another line of engagement, binding the international dimension of the festivals with

the local needs and interests, is to be developed in the educational links and programs.

A program of an international performing arts festival is per se a splendid learning

opportunity for the teenagers, to be approached through the middle schools. What

the festival can offer to them is not only information about and insight into various

performative orientations, genres, styles and disciplines. More than just art-related

know-how, festivals offer intercultural insight and an opportunity to enhance the intercultural

competence through live, complex and concrete case studies. Every festival

has some international productions that are especially suitable for educational application

but what is also needed is competent festival staff to develop and offer those

programs, teachers in the intermediate schools who are flexible and curious enough to

recognize the opportunity and ample advance time for school’s planning and scheduling.

In time, a festival staff that takes educational extension programs seriously might

hope to develop solid collaborative relationships with some schools and some teachers

in its own surroundings and to advance the intercultural competence of its own future

audience. However, festivals that take their educational missions seriously are still a

rarity. Moreover, public authorities subsidizing festivals timidly miss the chance to

confront the festival programmers with firm educational tasks and ambitious expectations.

2. 4. · The poetics and politics of space

There is no better way for a festival to generate a sense of business NOT as usual than

to stage some of its programs on unusual, unexpected spaces, on sites previously unused

for performances. Of course, most of the festival programs will have to take place

in the usual theatre venues, available in the vicinity, but almost any festival could

strive to discover and adapt at least one location for a special event, especially if the

festival is appearing itself as a producer or co-producer and not just a presenter. Some

festivals, such as Oerel on Terschelling, mentioned above, are site specific or site determined

festivals, specialized in ambiental or environmental performances, and to

discover such unexpected locations and transform them for a performative use is their

core business and chief mandate. The notion that a performance should take place on

a fixed stage, in buildings specifically constructed for performances, in theatre venues,

is in fact a rather limiting condition of performance and historically one that has

marked the performative practice only since the end of the 16th century when the first

durable theatre buildings were built in Madrid and at the periphery of London. Even

in those 400 years since then, performative practices were never limited to those venues

alone. The search for appealing alternatives to the standard theatre venue marks

the experiments of several great artists of the 20th century, starting from the Salzburg

Festival, established in 1920 by five artists including the composer Richard Strauss,

the dramatist Hugo von Hoffmansthal, the director Max Reinhardt, the stage designer

Alfred Roller and the conductor Franz Schalk. They staged the first performances on

the steps of the Cathedral Square and then two years later in the baroque Felsenreitschule

(the Summer Riding School) in the historic centre of Salzburg. A few years later

the large Festspielehaus was built and other theatres and concert halls came into use,

but still today this most prestigious festival feels the need to present some performances

in unconventional spaces such as a former salt factory and to stage Jedermann

at the open air in the Cathedral Square.

Staging dramas or concerts in public squares in front of the cathedral or the main

local church is in some countries a way to link the festival to traditions, such as in

Italy, where the so called sacre rappresentazioni date back to the medieval times. Since

the World War 2 several major theatre festivals established their distinction exactly

in appropriating some historic or ex-industrial buildings for the performance, starting

with Jean Vilar’s staging of the early Avignon Festival productions in the Cour

d’Honeur of the Pope’s palace in Avignon, adding throughout the years many similar

historic locations as stages. Since 1950, Dubrovnik Summer Festival systematically

appropriated various fortresses, chapels, squares, palaces, beaches, ramparts for its

productions and gradually brought their number to over forty. Many other festivals

did the same, reviving their architectural heritage and making it work as an interface

of artistic innovation and tourism development. It is the case of many theatre festivals

staged in ancient Greek amphiteatres in various Mediterranean countries (eg. France,

Greece, Italy, Spain, Turkey) as well of many music and theatre festivals taking place in

castles and palaces. Sometimes the set is provided by a public space - such as a square,

surrounded by old buildings, and for weeks every night it turns into an arena for the

festival productions.

Inventing a space of performance, appropriating it and adapting it for a single use is a

way for a festival to prove its own function in the creation of added value, additional

cultural capital. This effort allows the festival to experiment in the spatial shapes and

relationships of the performing and observing zones, in the communication patterns

between the performers and the viewers. Bringing the public to an unknown, previously

unfrequented space stresses the festive character of the festival and the forma-

tion of a special festival community, as short lived as it might be. To join the festival

audience is in itself an adventure, even before the performance begins. A journey from

the habitual cultural realms of a city centre to its periphery, to its ex-industrial ghettos,

underprivileged, stigmatized neighbourhoods and no-go zones, notorious for their

absence of even a rudimentary cultural infrastructure, rephrases the significance of

the endeavour and makes the artistic gesture affect the local cultural policy, urban

planning, socio-economic regeneration processes. A site specific performance, inaugurated

by a festival poses a question “what if…?”, provokes with a hypothetical vision

how the cultural and theatre map of a city could be re-arranged, reconfigured with

additional, only to discover, spots of emphasis.

And indeed, in many instances this pioneering adventure of a festival in discovering a

new performative site and making it work signals the beginning of a more continuous

cultural action, a lasting artistic presence. Repossession of a spot in what used to be

perceived as a cultural desert by a festival for a single festive use turns into ongoing

theatre utilization. In this perspective, festivals are scouts, precursors of a new artistic

infrastructure that, once launched, could benefit new groups of users and positively

affect the surrounding neighbourhood, bringing attention, media, public, frequent

visitors, investment and visitors spending on a daily basis. Festival is thus potentially

a symbolic reclaiming gesture, an initial deed of urban regeneration in social, economical

and cultural sense.

Alternatively, a festival probes the liminality of the city, seeking to establish temporary

performative zones, on the edge of the city, between the urbanity and the nature,

between the land and the water, on the muddy river shore or in an abandoned or decaying

harbour – as the SEAS consortium aims to do, by bringing its numerous partnership

projects to the hard hit ports and shipyards of Kotor, Klaipeda, Kaliningrad,

Koper, Trieste, Riga and Gdansk, in the course of 2004-5. SEAS is perhaps not a festival

in conventional sense, but a movable feast, creating several liberated territories,

reclaimed from a ruinous decay, industrial and economic obsoleteness, social stigmatisation.

With some good will and imagination, one can see festivals as an urban guerrilla

tactics to revalidate written off urban zones through artistic ennoblement, in the

hope that socio-economic and architectural rehabilitation will follow. Which sometimes

indeed happens. Amsterdam North, a zone across the river Ij, close to the city

centre and the railway station logistic hub, and yet separated by a considerable mass of

water, an ex-industrial zone, adjacent to many old and decaying workers’ homes, was

initially used by a series of summer festivals that focused on docks, hangars, collapsing

halls of disappeared factories, a contaminated seedy turf of no economic activity

and no sociability. After some years, this summer practice created sufficient critical

mass of attention and good will to initiate a major urban renewal operation, with a

new artistic hub and housing and commercial revalidation in the surrounding, cofinanced

by the EU structural funds.

More radically, a site specific festival could be read as a plea for the comprehensive

reinterpretation of the city, its entire urban tapestry, its reappraisal, its futuroplastic

manifest. Take Malta, the site specific festival in Poznan, started originally around a

recreational artificial lake Malta, at the city edge, showing that a sport resource could

serve cultural purposes as well and appeal to a huge audience in an atmosphere of

benevolence and relaxation, despite steady beer drinking. For more than a decade the

festival has been moving towards the traditional city core, to rediscover and reposition

various forgotten and ordinary city markers, use performances to make the citizens

take pride in the traces of the Prussian architecture, and reclaim potential cultural

hot spots from the encroaching mercantile capitalism with its aggressive billboards,

neon slogans and standardized chain shops, always the same, in each city. Malta festival

sooths the pain of urban transformation from socialism into capitalism, with real

estate usually becoming a prime value and loosing its public character in intensifed

privatisation transactions. At the same time, by keeping the regime of public urban

space, Malta reclaims Poznan as a community of citizens rather than just letting it become

a mass of 600.000 accidental consumers. The festival even turns this traditional

commercial city, spared post-industrial debris, towards an appealing destination of

cultural tourists, at least during this festive summer week.

Of course, a festival could provide and profit from temporary structures, set apart

from the architectural markers and prominent heritage spots. Like medieval and renaissance

fairs, a festival erects its temporary festival city, its nomadic encampment,

its bivouac of tents and summer pavilions, as in Nuernberg in the nineteen-eighties

and for many years now at the lake shore during the Zommespektakel in Zurich. In

this pavilion/tent city Zurich regains some of its historic linkage with the European

avant-garde (Dada) and escapes its standard image, shaped by banks, jewelery stores

and affluent bourgeois respectability, allows its citizens and visitors some relaxed hedonism,

a bit of open-air extravaganza – and some extra decibels as well, combining

the pleasures of the beach, food and art.

The argument made here is to see a festival not only in terms of its artistic content but

also spatial engagement, penetration of neuralgic urban spots and their appropriation,

setting in the best cases a chain reaction of socio-economic, architectural and cultural

transformation, upgrading and development; and in more modest cases creating temporary,

exceptional zones of sociability and imagination, opposing the pattern of the

seemingly rationalistic, market driven commercial exploitation of the urban space.

2. 5. · Positioning and developing a festival

When viewed as an organized ephemeral event – “an extraordinary event, in an extraordinary

place, at an extraordinary time”, if we may borrow from Wagner – a festival

would appear to be the ideal “cultural product” on which to experiment and use

the techniques and tools of marketing. This means transforming it into something

truly unique, creating brand awareness, increasing and differentiating the audience,

and attracting the attention of private sponsors and the media. In the most striking

cases, festivals – which are artistic-cultural initiatives of national and international

importance – are able to mobilise the public and public opinion, becoming to all extents

and purposes real urban and territorial marketing tools that can even characterise

a city or a region. The term “festival”, however, refers to a far more diverse, complex

and multi-faceted reality. It is an archipelago that combines very different artistic and

professional visions, areas for the promotion of local creativity and “showcases” for

presenting an international panorama. There are initiatives that form an intimate part

of the local area, and there are travelling projects, events for the local community and

programmes for tourists, along with highly specialised niche events, and interdisciplinary

approaches designed to appeal to the greatest possible number of people. It

appears clear that the marketing strategies that can be adopted by a festival must be

in harmony with a more general level of reasoning and programming in terms of the

festival’s vision and mission, the general context, the situation in terms of competition,

and changes in demand and use. To set up an effective marketing action, it is

also essential to consider the restrictions that may be implemented within this action.

These restrictions may, for example, be economic, but they can also be temporal (time

of year), linked to the evolution of demand or to competition (other festivals, “new

entries” in the scenario).

2. 5. 1. · Time as a strategic factor

In view of these considerations, it is clear that setting up a festival requires a very

close interconnection between the artistic, organisational and marketing objectives.

Putting on a festival in a period of time that is generally limited, with a considerable

concentration and overlapping of similar events in particular times of the year, and

in particular places – and this is particularly true of the summer: so much so that

the term festivalisation has been coined (or as the French would say it, estivalisation)

– makes some operations even more crucial:

these may be of a strategic nature, such as locating the festival and establishing

the right target

or they may be more specifically operational, such as drawing up the programme

and ensuring effective media coverage.

Given the increasingly competitive climate of festivals, they can no longer afford not

to adopt a comprehensive marketing approach. Since one of the purposes of festivals

is to bring together a lot of people, the majority take place outdoors during a couple

of eventful summer months. The result is that, very frequently, dance, musical

and theatrical life is divided into two parts: a long period of permanent low-intensity

production with limited resources, and a short period of high-intensity consumption,

with considerable resources, large audiences, high visibility and fierce competition.

This concentration in particular periods and places leads to greater competition not

only in terms of capturing the audience, but also in securing the artistic and technical

resources (artists, performers, organisers and technical services), finding public and

private funds, and gaining space in the media. While some problems may be tackled

and “negotiated” only on the collective level (one need only think of the problem of

coordinating the dates and locations for a festival in a particular area, and of how this

can be solved only by somehow coordinating all those involved), it is essential for each

individual festival to achieve that magical alchemy of artistic and planning consistency,

effective communication and a focus on the users that lets the “voice” and the

name of the festival emerge from that indistinct background noise produced by so

much supply of cultural and recreational events.

2. 5. 2. · Transactional vs Relational

There is also another reason why the relationship between temporal variables and

marketing is essential for festivals: because the festival has to work on a “two-dimensional

paradigm”, in other words it is important to distinguish between a simple transaction,

which “has a distinct beginning, lasts a short time, and is finally related to the

performance” and a relationship exchange (between different events in the same year

and between different years), which comes from agreements, lasts longer, and reflects

a continuous process. This means the festival has to simultaneously put into action

“transnational marketing” and “relational marketing”: as well as the spatial-temporal

dimension (the “here and now” of the show, which allows no deviation and no postponement

and which, as a consequence for marketing, requires particular concentration

on aspects involving communication and accessibility), there is also the relational

dimension, which depends on the ability of the festival to establish a “commitment” to

its public. The relational approach takes the form of a series of client retention operations

designed to increase both attendance levels during individual festivals and loyalty

over the years. This means that marketing and communication strategies need to

be orchestrated in such a way as to create an exclusive, long-term and easily recognisable

image of the festival that is considered important by potential users: this means

that the “brand” concept is a key element of festivals too.

It is useful to remind that, due to the change in forms and role of consumption – particularly

of leisure time – arts organisations are requested a more intense effort to

obtain client retention and stabilisation of their audience. It is the case of the LIFT

in London, a strong branded festival: a recent audience survey highlighted that most

people attended only one performance and that their choice was accidental. It is a

specifc situation that however reflects a more general condition: festivals should invest

more and more in marketing activities, since they can not count any longer on a stable

positioning guaranteed by their traditional audience with fixed habits and constant in

their choices. This is a matter of fact that festivals must accept.

2. 5. 3. · Festival and audience: what value to exchange?

When referring to festivals, it is important to stress how essential it is to know and understand

the audience in order to be able achieve, in the most effective manner possible,

that harmony between the overall initiatives offered, the shows in the programme,

and the audiences that one way or another contribute towards it, and indeed this is one

of the most significant results that marketing can lead to.

One of the most important objectives of marketing is to increase the value of the possible

exchanges between the festival and its audiences, considering the challenge of

“creating a public” as a process that, in the medium and long term, go beyond a mere

numerical increase to make sure that those who are already habitual consumers become

so to an even greater extent, and those who are not decide to try out a new

It is true that by carrying out segmentation, an organisation should be able to identify

which segments of users – in a given situation and in a given period – are the most

“profitable” target (in other words, those uniform groups of people who might have

both the interest and the possibility of exchanging value with the festival), but it is

equally important to identify the types of public in which to invest with the future

in mind. Audience development prospects should be followed up not so much with a

view to increasing the turnout in numerical terms, or even to counter a physiological

turnover of the public, as to broaden the base of potential users and obtain greater

access to cultural activities for all social levels. It is also important not to neglect the

fact that a cultural activity project able to practise a broadened social function might

provide grounds for a request for funds even in the current situation, which is increasingly

uncertain in terms of the ability of public authorities to give sufficient support to

many initiatives in the sector.

To increase the value of the exchange, in order to transform a simple transaction into

involvement and participation, it is important to pinpoint the benefits sought by the

main target group, along with their expectations, their consumer behaviour and the

deeper reasons for their participation.

In today’s society, consumption is the principal tool of existential investment and, in

our particular case, participation in an event like a festival becomes a pretext to share

“collective rituals” and feel oneself part of a “social tribe”. Festivals are the end result

of a whole series of individual shows that are often very different from each other, and

with audiences that are not always of the same type within the same event: one need

only think of those festivals that are characterized by a powerfully interdisciplinary

approach, with shows that are very different in terms of type and language. This is the

case, for example, of the great light-music festivals in the summer that involve huge

masses of young people whose motivations, apart from a desire to listen to a certain

type of music or a particular artist, are based on a wish for aggregation, experiences to

share and with which to communicate personal value systems and lifestyles. It should

be remembered that participation is often brought about mainly by the need to “be

there” and experience the event can also be found in festivals that are a far cry from

other great summer events. These might include the Salzburg Festspiele and the theatre

festival in Avignon.

But of course there are not only these great cultural events – festivals able to shift huge

masses of people and create great resonance in the media. Many aspects of dynamism

and revival in the sector actually come from the creation and proliferation of many

“local” initiatives that are closely bound to their particular area and community. This

is a factor of particular significance in places were cultural initiatives are not that numerous

(in the suburbs, in rural areas and in depressed zones, but also in small urban

centres) and festivals are a great opportunity in which more or less latent cultural

interests can find an accessible and gratifying area of confluence.

Even though there are several benefits, the expectations and interests involved in participating

in a festival make it possible to identify some general “family” clusters? Of

motives that lead to participation:

interest and involvement in the festival as a whole

interest and appeal of a show/artist

desire to have a pleasant and rewarding experience

Concerning these three categories of audience, it is interesting to examine the category

of those who are particularly interested in the festival as a whole. Here we have

people who are interested and involved in the themes and in the overall formula of the

festival. Very often these are a segment of the public who know and trust the artistic

approach of the festival: the fame, history and reputation of the festival are a guarantee

for the show on offer, justifying the choices made. This type of public is particularly

numerous when the festival acts as though it were a brand, in other words when it

manages to make its institutional reputation and image reverberate positively on the

theatrical company or the artist being presented. One of the positive effects of this is

that the public sees a reduction in the “functional risk” connected with the decision

to participate, i.e. that the show will not be worth watching or up to expectations. In

situations of considerable asymmetry of information and uncertainty concerning the

experience that one is going to have (this is especially true of those shows that are

particularly complex or relatively unknown, such as experimental theatre or dance, or

contemporary and experimental music), the reputation, the prestige, and the overall

image of the festival become the principal element for assessment – the parameter on

which expectations are based.

About the types of users, an initial distinction can be made between festivals in which

the public does not coincide, or coincides only partially, with those who during the

rest of the year form the traditional public of theatre and musical seasons, and those

festivals in which the public consists of people who consume the same artistic genre

more or less regularly throughout the year.

In the first case, we are dealing with initiatives that, due to the specific nature of the

artistic language or the way in which this language is offered, or due to a deliberate educational

intent, focus their offer towards a non-participating segment of the community

– people who for various reasons do not normally attend other artistic events.

Precisely because it is “out of the normal”, because it is able to offer the languages of

art and creativity in alternative and antagonistic ways, a festival can exert its own

fascination and appeal on those groups of users who are normally uninterested in or

indifferent to cultural events that are typical of the “indoor” seasons. From this point

of view, the festival becomes an excellent opportunity to break down those barriers

that traditionally stop the public from going to cultural events. This may be true of

people with low levels of education, with a passive approach to their leisure activities,

ethnic and linguistic minorities, etc.

2. 5. 4. · Branding and positioning

A festival is a complex product because it originates as the organisation of a certain

number of single events that are offered and co-ordinated in order to obtain an “additional”

sense (the idea or subject that the festival is attempting to address, the vision

or the values that it wishes to propose, and the overall experience it intends to offer).

This can be seen by the fact that if we wish to distinguish what a festival is and what

it is not (for example, a review) we could say that it is a festival when it generates that

holistic principle by which the whole (the festival) is greater than the sum of the parts

(the shows, the place and the public areas, the period, the audience, etc). The difference

consists in the ability to offer an “itinerary” that is governed by a guiding sense in

which a sort of indissoluble tie and reciprocal necessity is created between the various

elements that make it up.

In terms of communication and positioning, this means communicating a project (the

festival) which is the end result of a whole range of products (the shows) which are

themselves communicative. So it is really a “dual level” of communication opportunities

that, if managed improperly, can create confusion and lack of effectiveness. Is it

etter to construct the communication on the overall programme – on the fame and

image of the festival – or on the presence of one or more famous artists, and on the

most popular shows? When communication budgets and resources are limited, festivals

often find themselves having to decide whether to focus exclusively on institutional

communication, or place their bets also on product communication. The choice of

one type of communication rather than another, and the images, the content, the values

and the tone of voice that the festival adopts all combine to give it its position. In

this particular case, positioning concerns the way in which a festival is located in the

minds of its potential clients, assuming that consumers do mentally classify products

and experiences on the basis of one or more dimensions or characteristics. In order

to achieve correct positioning, festivals need to analyse the characteristics and factors

that are distinctive of their own project (for example, a unique and enchanting environment,

types of shows or themes that are otherwise not offered in the area, artists of

international fame) and those that best satisfy what the target audiences are looking

for (entertainment, relaxation, cultural enrichment, stimulation, status, prestige, etc.).

And the festival needs to differentiate and focus its communication.

2. 6. · The relationships with the stakeholders

2. 6. 1. · The stakeholder theory and the festival management

In the current challenging times of transition from a paradigm based on public responsibility

and funding to a new uncertain scenario where undoubtedly arts organizations

have to build a new legitimacy and a wider consensus, the stakeholder concept

seems a tentative but appropriate approach to describe the nature of the relationship

among the arts organizations and the contexts in which they operate.

Stakeholders can be defined as any people, groups, organizations who may affect or be

affected by or perceive themselves to be affected by a decision or by the development

and implementation of a strategy or a project or an activity. Stakeholders have not to

be confused with partners: the latter are already committed to a project, while the

previous are potential supporters, and only a convincing set of arguments and actions

can turn their neutrality or opposition into support.

The theory of stakeholders originated in the United States business sector, within the

fields of strategic management and the human resources management. It has then

been widely applied as a tool of analysis and orientation for strategic development,

particularly by the environmentalists and more recently also by service agencies and

public bodies working in arts and cultural development.

The stakeholder analysis is a good tool to consider the position and the role of a festival

in a community and in the wider operative contexts and then to identify the objectives

and the strategies and actions aimed at managing them.

This approach is a very much resources consuming, but provides arts organizations

with a variety of benefits of different nature and impact, which goes much beyond the

economic and financial aspects. It enables arts organizations to understand the environment

and the players, their needs, priorities and expectations, and consequently

to reduce the risks, to pinpoint the challenges, to create opportunities and to broaden

the perspectives.

Establishing and nurturing relationships is a long term process that has become an

essential component in the current practice of managing art festivals.

Managing stakeholders is essential from the early stage of the conception of a festival:

identifying them in relation to the festival project, checking their interests, their

importance, their influence and how those interests can influence the realization of

the project; analysing expectations, benefits, potential resources, conflicts, reciprocal

relations. Evaluating the importance of stakeholders means analysing the possible

concurrence of needs and interests, evaluating their influence means understanding

their power.

Stakeholders can be divided into groups which are common to all arts organizations

and festivals but can include entities that are stakeholders specifically associated with

a particular festival or typology of festival; therefore specific categories of stakeholders

can be identified, for instance, in relation to thematic aspects: a festival addressed to

children or hosting some events expressly conceived for children should involve public

and private organizations concerned with childrens’ activities, from educational

institutions to related businesses.

A festival dedicated to contemporary music for instance shares many stakeholders

with a baroque music festival (public authorities, local community, private sector etc)

but specific key stakeholders include many subjects such as the contemporary art institutions,

the national agencies responsible for the promotion of contemporary composers,

specialized publishers and recording labels as well as all the public interested

in the artistic creativity of out times.

Every festival should build a network of relations with the stakeholders, irrespective

of the art forms highlighted and – up to a certain extent, even when it challenges the

traditional taste and interest of local community.

A very well known example is the Ferrara Buskers Festival, one of the partners in this

project, which was established in 1988 and attracts every year hundreds of thousands

of people from all over Italy and abroad (see annex 1 for detailed information). The

organizers have been able to match the interests of different local actors (the community,

the public authorities, the shopkeepers and the tourist industry, the volunteers)

together with those of the artists and performers as well as of the tourists.

The success of this venture is clearly due to the ability of the organizers in combining

a variety of factors, such as the attractivness of the archictecture, the proximity to

touristic resorts, the traditional sense of hospitality and passion for arts of the local

community, the growing desire for new form of arts consumption and participation

and the need of a meeting place for the international community of buskers.

Another interesting example is the Wexford Festival Opera which was set up in the

early fifties in a small coastal town in the rural South Ireland by a group of music lovers,

in a context with very little tradition for opera and presumably no inclination for

the sophisticated neglected repertoire, whose presentation to the public was the reason

for establishing the festival. Despite its apparently very challenging scope, the Festival

has been conceived since its establishment as a resource for the community and has

been able to preserve in the years its focus and to become one of the most succesfull

event all over Europe, presenting each year 3 new productions in 18 performances, as

well as more than 40 daytime events. The whole community and all the guest artists

take an active part in the whole festival, which financially relies mainly on locally

based sponsors and voluntary labour.

2. 6. 2. · Festivals and their people

The “heart” of the festival machine is the team, that includes the staff, the collaborators

and the volunteers. The healthier the heart, the better the body work. The motivation

of the team is a main source of energy: a well organized and motivated team

makes the difference in making the festival happen. We could say that the difference

between just working “at” the festival and working “for” the festival consists mainly

in motivational implications.

A good feeling, sharing problems and solutions, improving personal and professionals

tools and experiences, working in a pleasant human environment are keys to motivate

the team in renewing the festival’s continuity and success.

Motivation and a feeling of involvement are the basic elements in the volunteers work,

bringing important resources to the festival working machine. The volunteer work can

be complementary to the professional work in the festival and play a very important

role since the absolute majority of festivals have a lean structure. Volunteers can be

involved in different ways, connecting their potentialities with the professional skills

and roles of the rest of the staff. Volunteers are more effective when involved in activities

connected with their personal interests and experiences.

Guest artists are the paramount reason of the festival, without them a festival would

not exist. A festival’s quality depends also on the care for the artists, including related

aspects which can make the difference, such as attention in providing the appropriate

working and accommodation, meeting the technical and logistical requirements,

a transparent communication, an effective promotion, interesting and appropriate

occasions to meet the audience, professionals and experts. All these aspects play an

important role in helping the artists perform under the best conditions , creating not

only a good image for the festival but also cultivating long term relationships. Reputation

in the communities of artists is a crucial component in enhancing the profile of a

festival and a very effective way to increase its competitiveness in the arena.

2. 6. 3. · Public authorities

The involvement of public authorities includes a wide range of players, from the European

Union to the national ministries, regions, provinces, municipalities. Festivals

with a strong international dimension can seek support from the agencies supporting

transnational exchange and cooperation, such as the national cultural institutes etc.

Public authorities can be involved in many forms, from applying for funding to asking

for patronage, from other forms of support to logistic collaboration.

In the current critical phase of a decrease in public funding for cultural sector, it is

of the utmost relevance for festivals to explore a wide range of different funding opportunities,

looking far beyond the cultural budgets to the funding, supporting social,

educational, tourist programmes within the framework of public policies at all levels.

In most big and middle sized cities in the last few years ad hoc agencies have been

established by the local authorities, often in association with a variety of private partners,

in order to stimulate and to manage urban regeneration and local development

processes; in other towns other bodies are responsible for city marketing: enhancing

the profile of the territory can attract capital investments or tourists. All these players

are relevant stakeholders of festivals and although they seldom directly finance a

festival, from time to time they support a production because it is staged in a specific

site or addresses a certain issue.

Besides this, the involvement of such agencies can open the door to other public and

private players who might be otherwise difficult to reach.

2. 6. 4. · The local community

The local community is in many respects the key direct and indirect stakeholder. The

way a festival affects and/or is perceived to affect the needs and interests of its members

(locally based associations, interest based groups, businesses) has a direct impact

because it influences the individual decisions of attending the performances and the

events but moreover, it induces a positive, neutral or negative cooperative attitude.

The feedback towards the festival among the residents at the end of the day has probably

become the most important factor in the decision making process of the public

authorities but also of the players of private sector such as larger companies and foundations

that operate on a wider scope than the local scene.

Residents and visitors attending the festivals are very often searching for more than

an artistic performance; they look for a socializing experience within a creative and

inspiring milieu. Festivals can therefore play a very important role also within a local

community, that goes beyond enjoyment and aesthetics.

It is then not surprising that festivals can create opportunities for local development

processes and can be a very interesting and useful tool for urban regeneration, setting

up or bringing special events in deprived urban areas, interacting with local changes,

stimulating creative interventions, planning activities that can affect regeneration

processes, in the short and long term.

A festival enables the residents to create a new vision, a way of looking at the place

where they live from another point of view, it can improve the quality of communication

among the residents and enhance the mutual understanding of social, ethnic,

age and cultural groups. Holding events in a “risky” area can help in making it more

attractive and safer for the duration of the event and hopefully beyond.

All these elements can create and/or reinforce the self confidence of the residents and

change the perception of the area within and outside the community, an essential

step in any process of urban regeneration. The social benefits deriving from a festival

may have a more relevant impact, if an adequate follow up of permanent artistic and

cultural activities is planned.

Contributing to a process of regeneration is also a very effective way to provide the

local community with social and environmental benefits which transcend the simple

economic impact connected with the expenditure of the audience and the guest artists

and staff during the duration of the festival.

Where ethnic communities have a strong share in the population of the territory, festivals

can represent a creative and powerful chance to open a new intercultural dimension

as well as to reach out to new audiences.

This type of involvement offers a concrete opportunity for stimulating new intercultural

processes, as has happened in Marseille on the occasion of 2 large scale street

Festivals, Massalia, held on June 1999, and Marsceleste, held in June 2000. Both events

involved for months thousands of citizens belonging to the many communities and

neighbourhoods which make up Marseille, in the preparation and realization of the

events, each of them attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

The variety of cultures of the inhabitants was taken by the organizers as a positive resource

to mobilize the various communities and social groups, stimulating an interactive

and cooperative practice during the creation and the preparation of the festivals.

Massalia and Marsceleste indeed meant a lot in many ways for the future of the city.

The two festivals increased the self-confidence of the residents, enhanced the understanding

and mutual respect between the ethnic and social groups, and contributed

to overcoming the stereotype of a city deeply marked by daily conflicts between the

different communities.

2. 6. 5. · The private sector

The private sector is another key stakeholder for festival, particularly in times of decrease

of public subsidies earmarked for arts and culture almost everywhere all over

Europe. The involvement of the private sector in the festivals can be pursued through

a variety of forms and at different levels.

A wide range of local businesses can have an interest in supporting festivals, since

many of them are a relevant component of the tourist supply and all festivals represent

today an essential element of the image of a city or a region. Shopkeepers, restaurants,

hotels, wine and food producers and farmers in the countryside, tourist initiatives and

every private activity that could provide some service to meet the festival’s needs, can

find its own opportunity to reinforce or expand their position in the market. A business

can support financially the whole festival, or a specific event within the frame of

the festival (e.g. a production, a single performance, an award), through a sponsorship

in cash or in kind. The latter includes a wide range of possibilities that include providing

venues, locations, catering, equipments as well as supplying services such as advertising,

transports, consulting or many other tangible and intangible resource..

When a festival (big or small) generates an impact on the whole community, the local

stakeholders include the chamber of commerce, associations of industrialists or

any other association of local producers or traders and they may even be interested in

becoming a partner.

Sponsorship is a way of involving the business community, based on a bilateral agreement

that identifies mutual benefits. Sponsorship demands a strategic and creative

approach, identifying businesses that can be linked to the festivals activities, themes

and related aspects, individualizing the reasons of a potential interest of the sponsor,

and being able to find for each case the appropriate solutions.

Seeking sponsorship therefore requires a commercial approach, together with an

awareness that sponsor’s interest in an event is directly linked with business aims,

sponsorship being a part of the marketing and communication strategy of the involved

firm. To involve business players means finding common objectives and setting

up cooperative process in order to build permanent partnerships, and this demands a

direct involvement of the partner in all the phases of the project as a creative working

The Mantova Festival of Literature, held in Northern Italy represents a very good example

of an event that in a very short time - it was established in 1997 - was able to

build a system of diversified relationships that include all the stakeholders and particularly

the private sector to an unusual extent. It has a real grass root origin since it

was initiated by a local bookseller and some friends with the twofold aim of providing

a meeting place for writers and readers as well as contributing to the promotion of the

beautiful capital of the Gonzaga dynasty, one of the most striking centres of the Italian

The festival has become one of the most important annual gatherings for thousands of

readers coming from far and near to meet writers and poets from all over the world.

The whole city is taken over for a week by readings, performances, concerts, seminars

in cafes, theatres, bookshops, gardens, squares, palaces. The whole community is involved

in the event which is supported by the local public authorities but above all by

over a hundred (!) partners, ranging from neighbourhood shopkeepers to some large

companies based in Mantova, professional bodies and NGOs. The various forms of

support that include patronage, sponsorship in cash and in kind as well as the commitment

of three hundred volunteers that ensure the organizational backup, cover a

large share of the budget and provide the visitors the unforgettable experience of a

community opening the doors of their city in the name of arts and culture.

2. 6. 6. · The foundations

Across Europe foundations are playing a small but rising role. They may support – and

in some cases they already do - festivals in developing innovative and challenging

initiatives that step into contentious territories where public authorities do not like to

It is important to understand that foundations cannot replace the decline of public

spending for arts and culture not only because they do not have the financial means

to cope with this ambitious goal, but above all because they want to pursue their own

agenda with their own priorities that may include geographical scope, fields of intervention

and other.

Many foundations are increasingly willing to support artistic and cultural projects

when they have some social impact that means addressing the main social and political

challenges of the contemporary European society. As it was previously stressed,

because of their more flexible nature, festivals can react more promptly than most

cultural institutions to the opportunities and demands of the civil society, without

compromising their mission and artistic vision.

2. 6. 7. · The arts organizations and the cultural institutions

Arts organizations, from festivals to any other local, national or international organizations

and cultural institution form this cluster of stakeholders.

If a distinction can be made, a subgroup of primary stakeholders comprises the performing

arts festivals and all the other bodies active in the same fields ( theatres, companies,

producers, agents etc) on the global scene, while a secondary subgroup is made

up of all the other relevant cultural institutions (such as museums, libraries, cultural

centres etc) particularly but not exclusively operating within the same territory of the

Among those belonging to the first subgroup abovementioned, a festival can identify

the most appropriate subjects with whom a range of collaborations can be established

(from the simple exchange of information to artistic co-productions, complex projects

and joint cooperative processes).

At local level, a festival can promote partnership outside its own specific field or artistic

form, with all the arts organizations and the cultural institutions, identifying the

mutual needs and benefits.

Long term projects and networking processes, involving arts organization locally

or regionally, can lead to interesting developments, creating the opportunity of collaboration

for local operators, contributing to audience development and educational

programmes, as well as promoting and enhancing the profile of the festival among

the arts community and the other stakeholders. Public and private funders usually

acknowledge the added value of cooperative initiatives among arts organizations as

opposed to an indifferent or competitive attitude.

Transnational networks (both thematic or issue based networks as well as the more

transsectorial ones) are also important stakeholders of festivals. They indeed represent

a good opportunity to enhance festivals’ international visibility in the artistic community

as well as the best arena for establishing useful relationships whose benefits

can range from the increase of knowledge and the sharing of experiences to the chance

of contacting new professionals and new artists – with positive feed back on festival

programming. Networks have also proved to be the most appropriate environment to

look for partners, to develop transnational co-productions and joint projects.

2. 6. 8. · Media coverage and communication risks

The importance of the festival’s ability to attract media coverage cannot be underestimated

for a number of reasons. Particularly when a festival is medium-sized or small,

and with a limited budget, effective activities by a press office can indeed compensate

for a limited and very often ineffective use of advertising or other forms of paid communication.

Having a festival that lasts a few days or a few weeks is both an opportunity

and a pitfall when managing relationships with the media. The combination of

a significant number of shows in one particular place and one particular period, the

wave of new ideas and the internationalisation that festivals often bring with them,

and the fact that festivals are an opportunity for visibility and renown also for the city

and its surrounding area, are all certainly conditions that can elicit a positive response

from the media and, in some cases, transform the festival into a real media event.

Conversely, the fact that it is an ephemeral event that runs its course in a short period

of time means that the festival’s communication runs the risk of cannibalisation by

exceptional or unforeseeable events (one need only think of those that took place in

the period around 11 September 2001 or 11 March 2004), or by competition from

other festivals that start up in the same period.

Another great dilemma in festival communication concerns the advisability of keeping

the attention of the media and public alive the whole year round, and not just

before the festival actually opens. In this case, if festivals approach the diversification

and wealth of local culture not as a form of unwelcome competition, but as an opportunity

to create economies of scale and communication, networking can also be used

as an instrument to limit the “communications lethargy” into which festivals lapse

during the year. This is precisely what happens with “Piemonte dal Vivo”, a circuit

of 70 festivals in Piedmont (North Italy) in which a process of coordination between

public authorities and festival operators has led to joint communication and promotion

activities (two-monthly newsletters, advance news about festivals that form part

of other initiatives in the region, special events in partnership with a number of festivals)

that make it possible to extend media attention and the interest of the public in a

number of festivals that take place in the area.

A festival, as a condensed event in time and space, offering a very special opportunity,

requires a condensed, impressive and immediate communication to get attention,

attract participation and diffuse the festival knowledge: media are a basic group

of stakeholders, becoming fundamental to inform people, to promote the festival, to

communicate its image, identity and value as well as providing a way to promote.

Traditional and more technologic communication tools are various and their effect is

usually complementary (press, television, radio, flyers, poster, printed media, public

relations, website, internet, mailing list, sms); they can be supported by more creative

and personalized promotional tools, from interviews to performances, from inserts

in unexpected contexts to special promotional events. Relation with media requires

continuity to maintain attention alive and to update information.

2. 7 · Final remarks

This publication emerges from a process of analysis and self-reflection that a group of

festival leaders carried out in period of more than a year thanks to a grant from the Culture

2000 program of the European Commission. This series of seminars has been run

as an intervision process, in which participants feel like peers and embarked to learn

from each other and to offer mutual stimulation for introspection and sharper definition

of developmental strategies. The publication is a concrete outcome of the process,

a product that enables other interested professionals to reflect on their own on the

festivals, their function, context and impact. At the same time, the publication seeks to

broaden the specific experience of the project participants and to integrate it in a more

general conceptual context. In their last session, in April 2004 in Tartu, two co-authors

of this publication, Dragan Klaic and Alessandro Bollo, joined the participants for a

final discussion and wrapping up.

What comes out from this final discussion is that intervision and self-reflection cannot

compensate for objective, systematic research, carried out on the basis of some sound

scientific methodology and hopefully, in an interdisciplinary and Europe-wide perspective.

Such a research could probe the elasticity of the festival formulae, deconstruct their

ingredients and probe their developmental potential through a limited number of extracted

models wit a variety of outcomes on a midterm scale. One could expect that

festival professionals, public authorities, media, educators and artists themselves could

profit from the result of such a research, if it gets undertaken at some point.

Special attention was given to the ethics of the festivals as platforms of intensive logistics

and risky multilateral cooperation, with many stakeholders, partners with contrasting

and perhaps mutually excluding expectations. This ethical consideration might ultimately

lead to some governance standards affecting boards, leadership and management.

Festivals are being experienced as an inherently vulnerable undertaking, easily affected

by its context. Not just bad weather and the shifting mood of sponsors endanger festivals.

With large crowds in attendance, limited means, more technological dependence

and habitual understaffing, festival pose some public and occupational hazards. Here

too, some models could lead to some professional standards that would enhance safety.

Another sort of vulnerability was amply demonstrated in the summer of 2003 when

union actions disrupted most summer festivals in France and lead to the cancellation

of the most important ones, as victims in the dispute about the future of the status intermittents.

Festivals need to seek distinction from other sorts of mass events that might have a

cultural dimension, beside an economic and community related one, such as carnivals,

museum nights, book and arts fairs, open monument days, bazaars of cultural offer, tall

ships and nostalgic festivities. While these forms of communal celebration and cultural

tourism have a clear purpose and frequent usefulness, festivals derive their credibility

primarily form their artistic orientation and vision and they both need periodic overhaul

and redefinition.

Continuity/ discontinuity dichotomy appears in festival on several levels, concerning

programming orientations and accents, intergenerational loyalty of the audience, persistence

of the support from the pubic authorities, sponsors and related NGO’s; and

finally in the succession of leadership and artistic teams.

The yearly rhythm of the budgeting, as practiced by most public authorities in most

European countries, stand at odds with the need of festivals to plan their program highlights

2-3 years ahead and to engage in international co-production with ample developmental

In the measure that festivals produce their own work that otherwise would not emerge,

and engage in own (co)productions, seeking synergy of local resources and needs with

global opportunities and talents, they will be seen less as precious platforms of international

collaboration and more as fine tuned instruments to further the intercultural

competence of artists, staff and the audiences.

A veritable explosion of festivals in Europe leads to some sort of festivalization of the

daily life and prompts a critique of the festival pathology. Again, only systematic research,

carried out on a relevant sample, fit questionnaires, focus groups and in-depth

interviews can indicate what is happening and what the possible future trends might

be. Ultimately, this publication is also a plea and an argument for such a research to be

carried out in the immediate future, hopefully again with the support of the European

PART THREE CVs of the Authors

Dragan Klaic is Professor of Theater Studies at the University of Amsterdam and a

Permanent Fellow of Felix Meritis Foundation (Amsterdam). Educated in dramaturgy

in Belgrade and with a doctorate in theater history and dramatic criticism from Yale

University, Klaic has been lecturing widely in Europe and America, took part in numerous

conferences and symposia and worked as theater critic, dramaturg, festival

and production advisor, editor, researcher and trainer. Before leaving Yugoslavia in

1991 he was Professor at the University of Arts in Belgrade and the founding Co-

Editor of Euromaske, the European Theater Quarterly. From 1992 until summer 2001

he was Director of Theater Instituut Nederland in Amsterdam. Among his books are

several works published in the former Yugoslavia as well as Terrorism and Modern

Drama (co-edited with J. Orr, Edinburgh Univ. Press 1990, paperback 1992), The Plot

of The Future: Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Drama (Michigan Univ. Press 1991),

and Shifting Gears/ Changer de vitesse (co-edited with R. Engelander, TIN Amsterdam

1998). His articles appeared in many periodicals in several languages. Klaic is a

Contributing Editor of the Theater magazine (USA), President of the European Forum

of Arts & Heritage (EFAH, Brussels), board member of Praemium Erasmianum

(Amsterdam) and Transeuropeennes (Paris) and member of the advisory boards of

the Nexus Institute (Tilburg), Kunsten 92, the Fund for the Central & East European

Book Project (Amsterdam) and of the Marcel Hicter European Diploma training program

Formerly a performing arts manager (1979-1987), is a Founder and President of Fondazione

Fitzcarraldo, an international independent centre for research, training, planning,

and documentation on cultural, arts and media management, economics and

policies based in Turin, Italy. He is responsible for the general management of the

Fondazione and Head of Training.

Professor at the University of Bologna and since 1995 at ICCM , Salzburg. Lecturer in

Italy and abroad. Acts as a consultant to public and private organizations on strategic

planning, feasibility study, project management and as expert of cultural policies for

the Council of Europe and for the European Commission. Has published and contributed

as speaker to international conferences and workshops in many countries.

One of the founders of Fondazione Fitzcarraldo - international independent centre for

research, training, planning, and documentation on cultural, arts and media management,

economics and policies based in Turin, Italy – he now coordinates the Research

Since 2002 he is the coordinator for the Cultural Observatory of Piedmont. Professor

of marketing and communication of cultural heritage and activities at Polytechnic of

Turin – II Faculty of Architecture and lecturer at the various courses for cultural operators

organised by Fondazione Fitzcarraldo. Since 2000 he is promoter of the Marketing

department at AISM, Italian Association on Marketing Studies, Milan, Italy.

He is member of the team for the Evaluation of cultural policy in Montenegro.

Formerly a contemporary dancer, she is now a performing arts operator specialized in

cultural management. Contributes to festival organization and other cultural activities;

works in dance organization, management, project planning, promotion (ADAC,

professional dance companies supported by Tuscany Region). Member of the Committee

for Performing Arts Cultural Policy Plan 2004, Province of Pisa.

She is now working at “Long Term Creativity”, a study on the long term interconnections

among artists, artistic centres and developing milieus of performing arts, under

the supervision of Ugo Bacchella and Luca Dal Pozzolo (Fondazione Fitzcarraldo).

Published papers on dance audience and dance system. Lectures in workshops on arts

and culture management (University of Bologna, University of Pisa).

The leader of the current project. She is working in the City Government of Tartu, in

Estonia, in the Department of Culture. In her job, she is mostly focused on generating

new ideas about culturel cooperation between cultural people from Tartu, Estonia

and abroad. During the last four years she has written several projects to different

European foundations to finance new ideas in the field of culture and has managed

numerous projects.

Formerly, from 1993 - 2000, she has been an owner-manager of an art gallery of contemporary

art and has organized art exhibitions there. She has also been a curator and

manager of several international art festivals.

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